The Bespectacled Girl has a weakness.
Not tote bags. Not food.
Stationery. More importantly, cute, aesthetic, but non-practical stationery.
People deal with their boredom in multiple ways. They watch TV. They sleep. They meet people. They wander into malls.
Our girl wanders into stationery shops.
She makes a mental note that she is venturing into the shop just to browse. Just to kill boredom.
As she passes through the aisles of the store, she reaches the danger zone: the shelves full of stationery. The cute kind, you know?
Her earlier resolve and self-talk to not buy anything seems to dissipate from her memory. Her brain selectively forgets.
She gapes at the rows and rows of stationery. She doesn’t ask herself, “Do I need this?” She asks, “Is this cute?” Once the answer is yes, the discussion is over.
The more absurd it is, the more she wants to buy it.
A stack of sticky notes with beautiful illustrations covering almost the entire writing space, leaving barely enough room to write an actual note? Cute.
A mechanical pencil shaped like a commode that opens to pop up an eraser? Weird but still cute.
A notebook shaped like toast? Cute.
A pen with a tiny avocado on top? Extremely cute.
Her practical self (which exists once in a blue moon) throws its hands in the air, giving up on trying to tell her that cute does not equal essential.
Sometimes, her stationery problem reaches levels that concern even her.
One day, she found the perfect pen. The ink flowed seamlessly. The grip was perfect. The price was reasonable. The colour of the pen was her favourite colour.
A happy smile spread across her face. She was proceeding towards the billing counter to finish her purchase. Just when she was about to cross the last aisle, she spotted something.
A mystery box. A sealed carton containing a pen whose colour nobody knew.
Our girl was in a dilemma. On one hand, she had the perfect pen in the most beautiful colour in her hand. On the other hand, there was the mystery box, promising excitement and the thrill of discovering what lay inside.
It wasn’t like The Bespectacled Girl was broke. She could buy both the pen she had chosen and the mystery box.
And yet, she took the most intelligent decision known to humankind and convinced herself that buying the mystery box was the better decision.
After all, what if the mystery box contained the exact same colour? What if destiny had personally packed that box for her?
Common sense never stood a chance for our girl.
On reaching home, she excitedly opened the carton. The grand reveal. It was not the colour she wanted. It wasn’t even close to the colour she wanted. It was a colour she actually hated.
Her friends wonder what actually happens in her brain to have thought of this. They stared at her in complete silence. Then they asked the obvious question. “Why didn’t you just buy the pen you actually liked?”
The Bespectacled Girl did not have an answer. She never had an answer. The mystery box did not have an answer either.
One fine day, when her energy levels peaked, she started on a decluttering mission. “Let me be a responsible adult for once and clean my desk and drawers”, she said to herself.
And so, she began decluttering.
She opened the first box. She found pens. A LOT of pens.
Little did she know she was to get the shock of her life as she proceeded.
She opened the second box. More pens. A LOT of pens.
Before she could recover from it, she opened the next box. No prizes for guessing. More pens. A LOT MORE pens.
Then she found the pencils. Fifty of them. Five-zero. Not an assortment of pencils. Fifty pencils of the same design. The Bespectacled Girl stared at them. The pencils stared back.
They would last for her entire lifetime and for the next two generations.
She stared hard at her collection. “When did I accumulate all of this? Why did I buy so many pens and pencils? How am I going to use these up?!!”
Clearly, there are no answers to this.
And yet, the next time she passes a stationery shop, she will walk in. Just to look. She will always say that she is just looking.
The stationery shop knows better. It has seen this happen before.
More Adventures of The Bespectacled Girl
- The Bespectacled Girl and Her Overpacked Tote Bag (TBG #1)
- The Bespectacled Girl and Her Culinary Adventures (TBG #2)
Follow along as The Bespectacled Girl continues collecting stories, stationery, tote bags, and entirely avoidable problems.
Before you go…
If you’re looking for your next read, don’t forget to visit Books I Love, where I’ve gathered some of my favourite books and why they mean so much to me.
You can also find me on Instagram at @thesoulfulnib, where I share books, blog updates, and little moments from everyday life.
Until next time,
The Soulful Nib
The Soulful Nib 