Natonal Ballpoint Pen Day?

Apparently it is National Ballpoint Pen Day...10 June that is. I didn't even know such a day existed. It is, so I am told, the day the patent was filed in 1943.  They are also called a "biro" of course - named after someone called Laszlo Biro - the man who invented them.
I have Ms W to thank for this. Her father was talking to someone who has written it into the state's newspaper.  C.... came home and told his daughter who then informed me.
    "And my dad still uses a fountain pen," she said.
At least she knows what a fountain pen is. 
The Senior Cat told her about learning to write with a dip pen and ink made from powder. She was appalled.
    "No wonder your writing is so bad," she told him with mock severity.
The Senior Cat's writing is appalling. He grips the pen as if it is going to run away from him. I remember watching him use chalk on the blackboard at school. His knuckles would be white. 
He rarely writes anything now. If he needs to send a letter anywhere I type it up and he simply signs it. He might dictate it to me but it is much more likely that he will say, "I need to send so and so a letter about such and such." That will result in me sending an email or writing the letter. He's 96. He can get away with it.
But I remember dip pens and ink too. They were still around when I was at school. I was supposed to learn to write with one too of course. We won't go into that.
I remember the smell of the ink. I remember the "ink monitors" filling those tiny china inkwells. I remember the mess that dip pens and ink made in the classroom. 
How many of us girls had our plait ends dipped in ink by the boys? They kept doing it even when they were kept in and made to write lines.
And then ball point pens came along. For a long time the only sort you could get here were blue...and they often leaked. For a long time it wasn't legal to sign documents with a ballpoint pen. Banks would not accept cheques written in ballpoint pen. The last time I went into the bank the manager witnessed my signature using a cheap ball point pen. 
I was supposed to teach "writing" when I had a class of ten and eleven year old students. I arranged to swap lessons with another teacher who could do it. She taught my class while I went and taught her class other things. I can remember her saying that she thought ball point pens did nothing to help people write legibly.
But, they are still around. They are likely to stay around. They went from being available in blue to being available in blue, black and red. Then there was the fat one which had four different colours because they had added green. Now you can get them in even more colours - although I wonder how practical they are.
     "But people don't really write any more," Ms W said
This is true. Even in school the children use screens. They are no longer taught to write the way we were. Ms W has been taught something but I wonder what the most junior of the juniors are being taught now. 
There used to be a section for "calligraphy" in the state's annual show. We ceased having it several years ago. There simply weren't enough entries to make it worthwhile. Perhaps we should have had a section for calligraphy with a ball point pen?
I doubt that would have worked. It isn't the same. I look at the penmanship of the past. There was something to be said for pen and ink.