THE LEGACY OF A LITTLE PLASTIC PEN AND PENCIL CONTAINER

"But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:" (Ephesians 4:15)

It's strange and amazing that brief and seemingly unimportant conversations and life situations can profoundly affect a person. That is the case regarding a little clear plastic pen and pencil container. The story dates from the early 1960s- I'm guessing 1962. I was about seven-years-old at the time. My father and brother Eddie were both outstanding mechanics and outstanding handyman. Both Gene and Eddie could repair anything. Not only did each have great mechanical ability, but each had the mind of an engineer. Now, as for me, I had almost no mechanical ability whatsoever, and I still am very challenged in these areas. When he wasn't functioning as a uniformed law enforcement officer, my father was most frequently found in work clothes doing some project around his house and property in Canton, Massachusetts. He built a wall- most of which is still standing today. He built an outstanding custom made wooden fence with the most solid cement and stone base (which holds up the metal posts to which the wood is attached) that I have ever seen. My Aunt Milly used to say these projects would go on to be a "memorial" of him; and indeed, they have.

It wasn't only big projects that Dad did, however; there were small ones, too. One day he called all of the family into the kitchen. There, he pointed out a small project he'd just completed. Dad had taken a small clear plastic pen container- it was, perhaps, five inches by two inches- and had screwed it onto the side of the wooden cabinets in the kitchen. I must say a word about these cabinets. The house was built in 1958. I am not sure where Dad found the cabinetmaker, but the kitchen cabinets were custom made by an outstanding craftsman at the end of his career. The guy actually died just a short time after he'd built them. The sight of the plastic pen holder attached to the side of the wooden kitchen cabinets looked, well, tacky to me! I loved my father, but there were also some great differences between Gene and his son Eddie. Eddie had a gift for knowing aesthetic beauty. Eddie was very masculine, but could have been an interior decorator. He knew just what furniture looked right; just what colors looked right; just what materials looked right. Eddie knew what looked classy and what looked, well- tacky! Dad sadly had no such gift. His taste in furniture and colors and materials and things like that was, well, to use a word I used about myself in this piece "challenged"! When he bought a brand new 1963 Dodge Dart station wagon, Dad installed the cheap metal tissue holder he'd previously had in his 1951 Plymouth sedan and 1948 Chrysler convertible. I don't know how old that tissue holder was- it looked like it was from 1937! It looked terrible. Yet, he installed it under the dash- just below the glove box area of the '63 Dodge Dart. Yes, Gene Baril did things like that! Did a cheap clear small plastic container containing a couple of pens which was attached to a classy custom made kitchen cabinet look much better than that tissue holder in the Dodge Dart? Well, not much better!

Dad called the family in because he was very proud of what he'd just done.

"What do you think?" he asked excitedly, "Now when you need a pen to jot down a phone number or a message, you can just open the case and there's always a pen there!" As I recall, everybody else liked it.

"NO," I said definitely, "I really don't like it."

I don't remember exactly what my father said to me, but as I recall, it wasn't pleasant! From my point of view, he was asking for an opinion, and I gave him an honest answer. I thought that was what he was looking for. Of course, that was not what he was looking for! It was a stinging and embarrassing and uncomfortable experience for me. As you can tell, I never forgot it. I learned to, yes, lie many times when people asked me things such as, "How do you like my new car?" or "Doesn't this haircut look great?" or "Isn't this the best restaurant you've ever eaten at?" Why do we do that? We ask people, "What do you think about this?" or "How do you like this?" but if they answer honestly, we are hurt and angry. Honestly, this is one of the toughest areas to deal with in evangelical Christian circles. "Nice" Christians lie all the time about matters like this. On the one hand, you don't want to hurt people, but on the other hand, you don't really want to lie! That incident with the little clear plastic pen and pencil container attached to the cabinet in 1962 was a defining moment for me- it was sort of a rite of passage- that of learning to "play the game" or be ridiculed and rejected, and it really doesn't make me feel very good writing about it even now.

My father wasn't all wrong, here! What I did not tell you is that attached to that wooden cabinet end, as well, was a 1958 red Bell telephone wall mount phone! My parents hadn't had it mounted on the actual wall, rather, it went on the cabinet. That was also a bit tacky, I suppose, albeit quite functional. The little plastic pen container only lasted about a year or two. There was a tendency for pens to easily fall out of it when it was opened up. There was also, of course, the tendency to lose the pens and leave the container empty. My father ended up getting a round pen holder- about the size and dimension of a "medium hot coffee cup" at McDonald's. This container could easily hold about fifteen pens and pencils, and if jammed, it could probably hold about forty. It was made of a cheap metal, and covered with some sort of imitation leather, as I recall. There was a brass hook that you attached to the cabinet, and then a hole in the container to hang it onto the hook. That container was there for at least thirty-five years! My sister now owns the house and she's done a magnificent job remodeling and updating the living space. There was no need to get rid of those magnificent custom cabinets, so she had them refaced. The wall phone and pen holder were eliminated! Today, there's a modern cordless phone on the counter. I'm not sure how my father would react to these changes, but I think my late brother Eddie would approve!

I wonder if you've got any "Legacy of a Little Plastic Pen and Pencil Container" stories from your own life, and I wonder how you deal with the, "What do you think?" and "How do you like?" questions.