Back To School Gift Full of Family Traditions

Published: September 5, 2015

Last week, a dad visited our 123 Station Street Store, in Barrington, Illinois to purchase another fountain pen for himself. He browsed through all the pens and the first pen he touched was a brightly colored Pelikan Twist fountain pen. This made me a little curious, because I remembered he had quite an extensive collection of pens. After he selected a midnight blue Lamy ‘Studio” pen for himself, he went back to the Pelikan pens on display and starting looking through the colors. I just new he had a story to tell.

I let him know we originally selected the Pelikan Twist pens, for our summer writing camp students, however, we sold just as many to adults. He smiled and said, “I was thinking of getting one for my son. His teacher is actually teaching cursive writing to his class. He is a little frustrated learning and I think it is because of how he grips the pen. I asked what his teacher thought? He said she thought he was fine. We discussed the different ways people, in general hold their pens when they write. I mentioned he just started and if it’s comfortable for him, its most likely just fine. He’ll adjust and holding the pen, like writing takes practice.

He shared he and his wife gave his son a bit of tradition, on the first day of school. He showed me a picture of a "Schultüte" (or “School Cone”, even though the word "Tüte" translates more as " bag" from German), is a paper or plastic bag in form of a big cone. It brought back memoires of his German childhood, where at the start of school all the kids got a bright colored school cone, filled with a pen, writing table and other school goodies. For his son’s "Schultüte," he and his wife included some traditional candies from both their family heritages to round out the gift. It made the first day of school special and rekindled a long-standing family back to school tradition. He selected the bright orange and blue Pelikan Twist to surprise his son and inspire him, as he learns cursive writing!

Keywords: Back to School, cursive writing, Lamy, Pelikan, Schultüte, Scribe September