Tuesday, February 01, 2005

The $3 Package

The LED laser pen is just about the best $3 I ever spent.  It’s a reasonably personable black ballpoint pen, one that draws a slim formal line that doesn’t smear, an easy-to-use writing instrument that rests solidly in the hand.  The point extends and retracts with a smooth twist of the burnished barrel. It’s nothing special, but it’s a decent $3 pen.

Except that this $3 pen has two buttons on the side.  The bottom button illuminates an eerie purple LED beam, sufficient to let me pick out the location of an unfamiliar keyhole, or to determine, on a dark path, what shadow-shrouded evilness my dog has found to eat.  It’s got a blacklight’s psychedelic hue but it doesn’t make your white socks blaze with violet violence.  It’s a handy light for any number of unanticipatible situations.  Just recently Kel was looking for her LED laser pen (we each have our own), which was stuck in her dayplanner; she leaned down on the planner as she searched, thus illuminating the purple beam and pointing her toward what she sought.  Now that’s an accomodating pen. 

And then there’s the top button, the one that fires a laser (or “laser"), a tiny red beam that can mark off your quarry even from hundreds of feet away, if you have amazing aim or the optional desk-mounted laserpen stand.  This laser is not strong enough to peg an airbus in flight, but it’s a powerful little pointer nonetheless.  I can use it at work to get someone’s attention without making a sound - I just shine a spot on their desk in front of them and they jump right up to find out who’s taken out a contract on them.  I can also use it to keep myself entertained during boring meetings, by signing my name on the ceiling when no one appears to be paying attention.  The pen actually comes with a warning sticker about dangerous toys or retinal cauterization or permanent blindness or something, I don’t recall what exactly - I pulled the silly thing off.  It disrupted the aesthetics.

In the little plastic case in which the LED laser pen came packaged, the thoughtful manufacturer even included a spare set of batteries.  I thank you for those, o gentle Chinese mercantile conglomerate - I’m sure going to need them.  This puppy is going to get a lot of use.  A pen that can elucidate, illuminate, target and blind, and then recharge itself, all in one tidy package: $3 has never bought me more.  And I’m a man who is attuned to the value of a tidy package.