…The Forgotten Art of Blotting
Last night I was phone chit-chatting with my granddaughter about a heart-broken friend’s daughter. The drama queen I am, 🙄 I described how awful this woman’s girl was crying by, “She was like a puddle of tears… you could sop up with a blotter”! This was the start of the lesson I trying to convey about how distraught this young woman was about her lover deserting her. Then how amazingly out of the blue, (literally), on a red-eye flight, a new man came into her life, to love her truly!
“Gram what’s a blotter”? Sophia stopped me… love mid-tale.
…Sophia is 30 so she never used a fountain pen like my Esterbrook pen. I used it in my school years circa the 1940’s, before ball-point pens were invented. I remember dutifully filling the pen daily before school day.
Later using a blotter, (a spongey pad), on my wet ink notes to prevent it from smearing. The trusty paper blotter absorbed excess ink from each moist written letter of my script. I also nostalgically remember my sometimes-inky fingers and the spots on my school clothes made when the fountain pens accidently bled.
Pen Ink & Blotter Days of my youth…sigh.
