Today I was cleaning my room, (it's now worse than before because I left halfway), and I found some old gel pens from years ago. I felt so excited almost as excited as I was when I first got them. When I was in grade 4 they were like the THING. All the cool people had them, the glitter ones that is. All your work had to be written with different colours, it didn't matter whether the teacher could read it or not, it just had to look glittery and sparkly.
Part of the reason it was such a craze was that we had all just recently recieved our pen licenses: A licence which lawfully allows you to do your school work in pen. Up to that point we all used pencils which was
so not cool. Only those who displayed good handwriting got their pen licenses so those who didn't have theirs were laughed at.
There were three problems though. One: not everyone's parents would buy them gel pens. Two: the class had many conflicts within itself. Three: the pen license.
I eventually managed to get my pen license by behaving well for a week and not getting in trouble... Once I got my pen license I was so excited to finally be able to use gel pens for my school work.
But my days of misery were not over for now I had to overcome yet another obstacle in my path, the gel pen licenses.
The class was divided into two due to some weird fight and those "cool" kids who had gel pens only let their friend use it. They cut out little pieces of paper and wrote "gel pen license" on it and gave it to all their friends. To be able to use a friends gel pens you had to show these licenses to the owner. As expected I did not recieve one of these gel pen licenses.
Eventually I got a gel pen license from the girl who sat next to me which might have been the most exciting part of grade 4 for me.
It all changed very soon when I didn't help her cheat on a maths test. My gel pen license got taken away from me. It was the meanest thing anyone could do. I was pissed. So for the next few days I whined and begged my parents to get me my own gel pens. They wouldn't get me any so I had to take it to another level. Everywhere they looked, they saw me looking sad and helpless.
Eventually my parents gave in and I got my gel pens. When I went back to school the next day with my shiny new gel pens everyone lined up to recieve their gel pen licenses. I told them I didn't have any and everyone was allowed to use my gel pens, because I'm cool like that.
And that's how everyone became my friend *cough* slave *cough*.
