The four colored pen tore onto the scene at some time while I was in middle school. They quickly ballooned to as many as twenty colors in one pen. The things we have acheived in my lifetime are outstanding. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the four colored pen in particular. This morning at our ORR devotionals Deb was using what seems like it could be an original issue four colored pen. Blue, black, green, and red, just the basics. Instead of paying attention to what was going on I focused on the pen. What are the imlpications of the four colored pen? Has it really improved our life? I pondered this for a few lingering moments. My thoughts are transcribed for you here.
At first I felt like the four colored pen was a great invention. It's only one item in your purse or pocket and if one color runs out another one can easily be clicked in to replace it. I feel now that the benefits stop here. How much space are you really saving? There is no practical use for green ink in the real world so already 1/4 of your investment is useless. Red has a very limited use unless you are an educator grading papers. So that leaves us with blue or black. The two colors that can actually be of use to the everyman. Even a pen with two colors takes up more space than two separate pens and besides one color dying I can't think of another instance where one would need two colors at the same time. If you have one two colored pen you couldn't share with a friend in need. This leads me to believe that if you must use multiple colors of ink in a day you are better off carrying two pens. Then at least you can share one. I just thought of this too. If you are going to lose one pen wouldn't you rather lose a single color and have another ready to go or lose four colors all at once. Your choice.
A final thought. A twenty colored pen, while bulky, would be of some use to an artist that employs the medium of pens. Otherwise, I pose this. You can't write a check out with pink or orange. So what's the point.
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2 comments:
Talking smack about four colored pens? I hate this blog.
Back in the day before computer charting, which was also back in the day before I was a nurse, the nursing homes I worked in used black pen for daytime, green for evening shift, and red for night shift. Now that I"m a nurse and constantly terrified of getting sued, I"m not sure how legal it was to use all those colors, but I digress.
Since I worked all shifts, those 4 color pens came in handy. I still use color coding on my "brain", which is the paper nurses carry around so we can keep patient info straight (blood sugars in red, name, diagnosis, doctor in black, IV fluids in green, etc)...so maybe that's where Deb's pen was from.
As nurses are notoriously territorial about their pens, losing one isn't an issue--I used the same 2 black pens for the first 3 yrs I was a nurse. They even went back and forth to the ship with me. If my Dutch cabinmate hadn't always been stealing them from my pen cup and using them, they might have even lasted longer!
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