Younger people don’t have this luxury – they have to learn from their mistakes or they’re going to have a rather shitty life, perhaps working at McDonald’s if they’re not in jail or dead.
For the really smart younger people making mistakes is a great thing – it’s cheaper and more effective at creating new ideas than traditional forms of education.
Take my self-publishing career. I’ve made just about every mistake in the book, sometimes twice. But now I know what I’m doing and people pay me to help them avoid those mistakes.
When it comes to an issue like pen caps, however, it seems no one is learning, and it’s costing us young Americans.
Take this fun image I found on the Cheech and Chong page on Facebook:

Now, I’m not sure how much money the industrial fountain pen industry makes each year, but I’d think they should be taking some measures to protect people against their dangerous product.
I want investigations, Senate hearings, fines, jail time, damn it!
But of course that’s silly. I mean, most sensible and responsible adults can use a pen just fine, and aside from a possible scratch while digging under my nails, I don’t think I’ve ever been harmed by those pen caps personally.
But others have, by God, and something should be done. If we’re not going to have an inquisition, maybe we should just ban these things. I mean really, right now we’ve got 100 deaths – tomorrow it could be 1,000!
And don’t think that this problem will stay isolated to pen caps alone for very long. Oh no, not by a long shot. It’ll spread to pencil tips, then those large pencil erasers that are sometimes two colors. Pretty soon kids will be sticking Elmer’s Glue in their mouths.
That’s not what America is about. Instead of letting these senseless deaths continue, let’s get these pens off our shores. If we have to wage a war to ensure all cheap pen factories the world over are closed down, then that’s just what must be done.
It’s our future we’re talking about. Just one pen cap in a child’s mouth is all it takes for them to win and for you to lose a child. The economic impact of losing just one child to a pencap is simply too monumental to think about.
How long will this travesty continue, I ask you? How long will the government continue to turn its head and ignore this problem? Maybe it’s time for the state’s to take power into their own hands, come up with solutions when the Feds won’t!
It’s sad that it’s come to that, but as you can see, lives are at stake.
Contact your congressmen or women and tell them that something must be done…tell them now!