Though I can’t see it, I imagine the tip of my left index finger is often blue.

Most people who use my ballpoint to help me sign a document, write out an address on an envelope, or pen a handwritten thank-you note, do not put the cap back on, twist it closed, nor mash the spring-mechanism to retract the point when they are finished with it.

I imagine most of you think you close your pens when you’re done using them. And maybe you do with your own ballpoint – but you don’t when your using someone else’s pen, perhaps unconsciously figuring the owner of the quill might want to use it right away to write more stuff.

I’m here to report that upwards of 80% of the time, my pen helpers leave the point exposed to the universe, to lay waste anything it touches, possibly leaving a stray mark on the tablecloth, a stain on my pants after rolling off the open envelope, or depositing a permanent design on the carpet after blitzing my pants.

Folks that do close my pen after helping me, sometimes take umbrage if I ask them if they closed it up, as if to imply “my mother taught me to do that, you knucklehead.”

Other things that our parents teach us that don’t necessarily hold together in the good habit section of our brains, include turning off the light when you leave a room, making sure the fridge door is closed, putting your dirty clothes in the hamper, wiping your feet before entering the house, washing behind your ears and cleaning your tools after using them.

So, for better or worse, I just check the pen point myself and wind up more times than not with an indigo blue fingertip. Sometimes it’s just a dot, and other times a small jagged design, as I do have to move my finger a little bit to see if it’s the tiny circular socket rim I’m feeling, indicating no exposed point, or if it’s that little pasty metal rollerball tip having its way with my digit.

It struck me the other day, after washing my finger and wondering if the ink was gone, that someday in the not too distant future, inky fingers won’t be an issue. We won’t be writing anything by hand; all our correspondences will be tapped out on a keyboard or dictated into an app. No more pens. No more blue fingertips!

Handwriting will disappear as will moving “clockwise” become an obsolete direction.

I was driving to the film set the other day with a 27-year-old production assistant and I was describing to her a situation where someone was “moving counterclockwise.” Five more minutes into the story, she asked, “What does counterclockwise mean?” I decided to grasshopper this one so that she might discover the answer for herself, and said, “How do you tell time?” She said, “With my iPhone.” Ah! A smartphone doesn’t have a round face with hands that rotate in the same or opposite direction like the movement of the hands of a clock. Got it.

I have, no doubt, entered the final third of my life; my past is expanding and my future is shrinking. I’m having robust conversations with adults who are not familiar with “The Graduate,” cannot name a single George Harrison tune and don’t connect with the concept of clockwise.

As a blind dude, I may be living in the dark, but our past sheds so much light that, if we live long enough, it darkens with time.

So, as pens disappear and faces of clocks vanish, say bye-bye to words as emojis co-opt our vocabularies…and here come driverless cars around the corner and before we know it, “Beam me up, Scotty” will be the normal sort of command that we’ll use to scramble our molecules for traveling from point A to point B.

Until then, as you boost a pen from the bank or your hotel room, make sure the tip is closed before you stuff it into your shirt pocket or purse.

👍😎

Steve Gladstone

The Blind Dude