It is an unfortunate quirk of WideEyedFunk life that I can’t have anything nice. I drop things. Trip over things. Knock things from mantels, shelves, the wall. My ruination of something precious is always followed by stomping and loud wailing on the theme of “Why can’t I have anything nice?” for fifteen to thirty minutes

This time it was my Cleo Skribent left-handed nib, stainless steel, piston reservoir fountain pen.  I don’t carry this pen out of the house because it will be lost. I use it at my desk and planned to do so for the next 40 years. And then over the weekend I dropped it. Of course I did.

Because the Cleo Skribent is so wonderfully heavy, it fell with authority. Because the Cleo Skribent hand-enameled nib is so wonderfully lovely and precise, it bent all to crap. The fall from my desk was effectively the annihilation of all that is nice about my desk life. I love this pen and I love the peacock blue ink I put in it. Go ahead, write your grocery list with a pen that cost more than the groceries. You’ll see – milk, eggs, dog chow, beer…they never looked so good. Yes, ball point will work, as will pencil, blood, chipped stone, or wax tablets pressed with cut reeds. I prefer my Cleo Skribent.

I was in the kitchen, under the bright stove light with some needle nosed pliers, weeping and wailing, shrieking and feeling sorry for myself when the WideEyedSpouse found me. Or perhaps more accurately, when he decided it had gone on long enough to be interesting.

The pliers were too big. The nib was too bent. I needed jeweler’s tools. I needed to send it away for repairs. I might as well just throw it in a drawer because This Pen Is Dead to Me. I Can’t Have Anything Nice. I sulked away to the kitchen table with a medicinal glass of wine.

The WideEyedSpouse swigged from his can of Pepsi and had a look at the Cleo Skribent. He unscrewed parts, pulled things apart that I was sure weren’t meant to BE apart, and ended up with just the bent nib and a pair of pliers way too big for the job. He bent a little, peered at little, bent a little, peered a little. After a little while he handed my whole pen back to me. It worked. Like it never even happened.

“Awesome,” the WideEyedSpouse said, “There is nothing I can’t fix. And I don’t even need the proper tools to do it.” He looked pretty smug.

But who cares. The Cleo Skribent writes again. I’ll let him have this one.