Where do all the lost pens go?

I saw a story on Friday about how some men love their sheds. According to a survey, nearly 20 percent of shed owners are partial to “hanging out” in their shed, 36 percent have installed a stereo, while one in four have a bar fridge.

I’ve never been someone who hangs around in sheds. To me, they are storage facilities, often for junk or things that don’t fit in the house.

We have three sheds at our house.

I went browsing in one of them this morning, trying to find some old CDs with work data on them.

I didn’t find the CDs, but I did discover a dozen or so pens, a cricket ball and an old USB disk.

Remember when USB disks first came out?

This one is two and a half inches long, about three quarters of an inch across. The data capacity is 128MB. I have a fairly new drive that stores 4GB in half the size.

Finding the pens was a real bonus. I bought a pack from the supermarket recently and none of them worked. There are never any pens handy in our house.

I often wonder where all the lost pens go. Some of them migrated to the shed, it seems. Not enough though to explain why so many pens disappear.

There must be an underground chasm somewhere that’s full of odd socks and pens.

At work, I need to hold a pen nearly the whole day. If I leave my desk to see someone, I take a pen, even if there is no intent to write with it at the destination point.

I don’t think it’s a security blanket type relationship, more likely it’s insecurity about the pen disappearing before I return.