The Most Dangerous Pen in Fernley
There was a time in this country when a boy could carry a toy six-shooter to school, point it at a friend, and be congratulated for having a lively imagination. Those days are gone.
Now, if a child possesses a writing instrument that resembles a firearm, the machinery of civilization begins to grind, bells ring, telephones tremble, and somewhere a government official reaches instinctively for a clipboard.
Such was the case in Fernley on Thursday morning, when the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office received word that a student aboard a school bus bound for Fernley Intermediate School was carrying a gun. The report arrived about 8:30 a.m., which is early enough in the morning for most citizens to be concerned with coffee rather than ballistics, but apparently not early enough to prevent the machinery of alarm from warming up.
The deputies located the bus and began their investigation with the seriousness appropriate to a report involving children and firearms. Picture the scene: a school bus filled with children, backpacks, lunchboxes, homework, and the usual collection of adolescent mysteries—including why anyone would voluntarily rise before sunrise to attend school.
The investigation eventually produced the culprit. It was a writing pen.
Not an ordinary pen, mind you. That would have been too simple for modern America. This particular pen was shaped like an AR-15-style rifle, thereby transforming the ancient and noble instrument of education—the humble pen—into something that could apparently frighten a community before it ever got around to writing an algebra answer.
Another student saw the pen, became concerned, and did exactly what they are drilled to do. The student told a parent. The parent told the school. The school told the sheriff’s office. By the time the information completed its grand tour of civilization, a perfectly innocent writing instrument had been promoted from stationery to suspected weapon.
The deputies investigated, because that is what deputies do when somebody reports a gun. They looked, they asked questions, and they determined that there were no firearms aboard the bus. There was no threat to the students, no threat to the school staff, and, presumably, no immediate danger from a sharpened No. 2 pencil either.
Still, the incident illustrates one of the great achievements of modern society: we have developed such magnificent communication systems that a pen can travel from a child’s backpack to the sheriff’s office without ever moving an inch.
And perhaps that is not entirely a bad thing. Better to investigate a harmless pen than ignore a real firearm.
The difficulty is that civilization has reached a stage where the difference between the two must sometimes be established by a deputy standing beside a school bus at breakfast time. I suspect that somewhere in Fernley, that rifle-shaped pen is now sitting quietly in a backpack, wondering what all the fuss was about.
It probably intends to write a report about the experience. I would advise it to choose its words carefully.
