The Silky Smooth Gel Pen

Gel pens: the pen of the early 2000s utilized by every boy and girl that wanted to draw or write with flair– and one of my personal favorite writing tools from back in the day.  Growing up I was constantly drawing and creating detailed pictures of houses and their interiors.  My trusty box of gel pens provided an array of silky smooth colors to choose from to create these structures.  The gel pen’s ink always flowed onto the piece of blank paper like a continuous ribbon, livening up the white canvas with every turn of my wrist. While drawing with gel pens always provided me with a good time where I could explore my creativity, it also served as a way to interact with others.

One of my best friends from childhood also was a fellow gel pen aficionado and frequently had new colors.  This meant that at school we would both bring a handful of gel pens from our personal collections to school and share with one another.  This instantly made all the elementary school work that much more interesting for us.  Once dull and lifeless math problems now had a trail of glittery gel pen displaying the answer.  Writing in class now meant another opportunity to bust out these marvelous writing utensils and make the words all the colors of the rainbow.

Gel pens were not strictly associated with the classroom, however.  Whenever I would go shopping with my Mom at a home goods store in Walnut Creek, which I sometimes loathed, my mood would instantly be lifted when we approached the cards and stationary section that housed a nook of gel pens.  This place had a plethora of colors– pastel, neon, glitter– you name it, they had it.  So this routine of wandering around the store, trailing my mom as she poked around, turned into a game of me waiting until we reached the mesmerizing hub of gel pens.

These inky tools are nostalgic because they are more than just a forgotten tool of the past– they were my drawing utensil of choice, my pens to share with my best friend, and my occasional treat at the end of a day of shopping with my mom.

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