It was designed so that astronauts – whose pencils had broken and were stranded without a pencil sharpener in space – were still able to write shopping lists in a zero gravity situation. The incredible technological advances in the modern world are truly remarkable and none more so than the space pen. I am talking about the amazing fisher space pen. There are myriad other types of pen that have their own particular problems but there is one that turns out – completely by accident – to be the ultimate left-handed pen. But the risk of arthritis in later life makes it a non-option for me. I don’t care what you say, it is physically impossible to write with a fountain pen when you’re left-handed unless you adopt some wrist-straining style of holding a pen. Stroke it from tail to head on the other hand and – unless it’s one of those mad cats that likes it – the moggie will look at you in a particularly unimpressed fashion before hissing at you / biting you / scratching you / walking away and ignoring you for a while / hissing at you then biting you / hissing at you, biting you then scratching you and so on…ĭon’t even get me started on fountain pens. If you stroke it from head to tail (and it’s a friendly cat) it will most likely purr and be nice to you since that’s the direction its fur grows. Write a paragraph or two and the ball point pen will often dry up, you’ll need to scribble a bit and you’ll be able to carry on. But write left-handed and most of the time is spent with the nib pushing directly into the paper itself, preventing the free-flow of ink to the page. This principle works well if you’re right handed since you spent 99% of your time with the nib facing away from the direction of travel. The problem is that a ball point pen is designed to allow ink to flow out of the nib while it’s being moved across a page. Let me explain with a picture and some arrows:Īs you can see from the picture, I’m writing from left to right and I’m left-handed. They were designed by right-handed people. You see, the pen – and more specifically the ball point pen – has a fatal flaw. One of the most annoying aspects of being left-handed is the simple act of writing with a pen.
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