The pen is mightier than the sword. Especially when you incessantly flip it around in your hand.
That’s what I do with my pens, even when I’m not writing with them. In fact, I’m doing it right now. I twirl them between my fingers, pointer to middle, middle to ring, ring to pinky, and back, thumb guiding the rotation all the way. It’s a pointless gesture, a needless fidget, and worse, it’s distracting.
Example: My wife Sara and I work for the same organization, so one time I was participating in a presentation. I use a passive verb here because it’s accurate; My colleague spoke the whole time while I stood there flipping my pen, i.e. doing nothing. Sara was watching this presentation, and she kept giving me looks, so I stopped pen flipping.
Yet I’ve never stopped it entirely. Why should I? I’ve been pen flipping semi-compulsively for the past three years now, maybe longer, and I have no plans to stop now. It gives me something to do with my nervous energy.
Is it annoying? Totes. It’s a nervous tick no less bothersome than singing the same song over and over or saying “umm” all the time (both of which I’m also guilty of). Plus, my pen flipping is extra disruptive when I fumble my implement and it clatters to my desk, which is about as frequent as former New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones fumbling footballs, which is to say, super frequent. I like hefty, oftentimes metallic pens, so when I drop them, they make a ruckus.
To be fair, many of us have nervous ticks. My sister laughs. My daughter gnaws on her hair. Even my cat has one: She scurries away at the slightest sign of danger. We’ve all got nervous ticks, and I’ve been telling myself it’s futile to abandon them.
…Or is it? I’ve been reading a lot about hypnosis lately, specifically when it’s used to access repressed alien abduction memories. I mean, I don’t remember ever being abducted by aliens, but that doesn’t prove it didn’t happen. For all I know, my abduction was brief because they couldn’t wait to send me back to Earth because of all the pen flipping.
Anyhoo, I think the pen thing would concern the average hypnotist more than aliens would. If I visited said hypnotist, here’s how it might go:
Hypnotist: So Kyle. I understand you’d like to be hypnotized into curing your pen-flipping addiction.
Me: Yes.
Hypnotist: And you’re aware there are other, perhaps more pressing character flaws you might cure, such as your addiction to Magic: The Gathering or your tendency to chew gum with your mouth open?
Me: Yes.
Hypnotist: And you do realize you’re flipping a pen right now?
Me: [Looks down at left hand to discover fingers are indeed flipping a pen.] Oh. Whoops.
Hypnotist: Well you better get your ass ready, buddy, because we’re about to begin.
Me: Okay. How much does this cost again?
Hypnotist: $100 an hour.
Me: You know what? I just remembered something… [And I scurry away.]
Another character flaw the hypnotist forgot to mention: I’m a cheapskate.
So maybe I should just avoid my pen-flipping problem. Vampires do it with garlic, so I suspect a similar moratorium should be possible for me. Why, I’d just need to steer clear of front desks, art studios, and office supply stores for the rest of my life. How hard could that be?
They say us Italians talk with our hands, and if my hands could talk, this is what they’d be saying: “I wish I had a pen right now.”
Kyle A. Massa is a comedy author of some sort living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include eight books, along with several short stories, essays, and poems. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking cheap coffee.