It says a lot that I’m more interested in my students’ pen cases than I am their actual education.

In my defense, I do actually attempt to educate them and then use the “free” time I have whilst they are working to spy on their pen cases.

The most interesting collection, which earned the owner bonus points, featured a red Mead Composition Book, a Mead standing pen case, and Sharpie Accent Highlighters. He didn’t have any fountain pens (the Mead notebook was the hint) so he didn’t get full bonus points, but it was a very manly try.

The ugliest pen case, that was still kind of cool, was some kind of red creature. The eyes were on the side of the bag and the mouth and teeth were the opening for the pens. It then had long, colorful arms hanging off the side. The arms were long enough and floppy enough, at least to my eye, to 1) allow the owner to tie the pen case to something and 2) be annoying and get caught in stuff.

The other pen cases were small and sleek and carried only a few pens and pencils and cost their users several points. (Only a few? Really? Here’s “only a few” points. Your homework: go buy some pens.)

The fuzzy My Melody and the fuzzy Hello Kitty pen cases lost points for being fuzzy and obvious. At the least the My Melody appeared to stand and to hold a lot of pens.

If Japanese phones and tablets didn’t have built in audible “shutter” clicks on their cameras (even in manner mode) I’d have quietly taken some pictures. (Now that I think about it, I should have taken some video. Maybe next time.)

Of course, I could also ask permission to take pictures of all these, but that might make me seem kind of creepy.