Superstition - Bonnie Smetts

We’re allowed to bring our own pen to the test. We’re allowed to bring two. So I do. I always bring the blue one and the dark, dark green one. The ink has to be blue. And I line up the green one at the top of the desk, in line with the edge, just below the monitor. In line. A line that I can see in the fuzzy part of my eyes. It’s like a friend or something, that green line keeps me from really looking hard at what I’m doing so that I keep doing it. Typing fast, and not thinking. The more I don’t think, the better I hear. And the better I hear, the faster I type. And that one green line keeps me moving along.

I don’t know how I started that. Well I do. The first test of school, somebody gave me an extra pen because I didn’t know we could bring it. The girl in front of me just slid it under my monitor at the last minute before we got the “go.” And the whole time I was dictating, I was looking at it, fuzzy. I couldn’t stop almost looking and I thought it would just drive me crazy, that green line. And when we had to stop, I’d been the fastest at the dictation.

So ever since then, I’ve got my green pen. And I don’t even like green, and I never write with that pen. And I don’t know where I’d get one like it if I had to. Pens are black or blue or red or pink or something like that. Not green. Just my pen. And after I’d done so well with the pen, I asked the girl if I could have it. I offered to buy it. She just laughed and said it was mine. She said she’d given it away to me because she didn’t really like green.

And now I got this little secret. And I’m telling no one because I’m doing so well with my speed. And that girl who gave me the green pen, she’s got hands like feet, she’s barely keeping up with the rest of us. I think she might need to be choosing something else to do for a career since she’s let go of the only secret that might have helped her.

I slip my green pen back in the pocket inside my purse after the test. I don’t touch it or take it out until I need it again. Even if someone came running up to me and saying that they were in an emergency, please, please do I have a pen, I’d have to lie and say no.