Sometime around my ninth or tenth birthday, I received a red-barreled Parker 45 fountain pen as a gift, and my sensual relationship with paper and ink went into hyperdrive. The sclerotic ballpoint with its anemic gelatinous ink and sticky blobs every third word was no match for the elegant fountain pen from which dense black ink flowed onto the paper without resistance. I was to endure many years of difficulty in school as the only member of my class with a fountain pen. However, it was more likely the gray attach case that I obtained the summer before entering the seventh grade that sealed my fate with the bullies.