The Loser's Pens

An interest in pens would rate high on the male dork list, somewhere around playing dungeons and dragons, coin or stamp collecting, and conspiracy theories.
The Complete and Total Loser loves pen.
How many pens do you need? One. What kind do you need? Any. A Bic. It doesn't matter. Even people who get misty eyed when they talk about the niceness of hand-written cards and letter write few words a year by hand these days.
These are the Loser's pens. He likes them all for different reasons. Lately, pens have gotten bigger with rubberized grips, even as people use them less. The Loser used to like such pens, but now has become fond of slim ones. They look so fragile in his hand, which is large, yet they write the same.

The Loser's main pens. On top is a Fisher Space Pen, then a Mont Blanc, a no-name, a Sheaffer and his latest, a Parker Jotter.

His latest pen is the Parker Jotter. Watching "Masters of Sex" made him want one. They all seem to use them on that show, with the hierarchy showing; the office workers use the two-tone plastic and metal versions, the doctors the full metal ones.
In 1983 the Loser bought a Fisher Space Pen. He used it faithfully and it traveled overseas with him for half a decade (the Loser seldom loses such things). 
The Loser had no children. Most of what he owns will be thrown out. What little isn't will be given to strangers. He likes the idea of someone picking up a Fisher pen dulled by patina and being surprised that it still writes -- their ink cartridges last for many decades, unlike those of other pens that dry up in less than one.
There are dozens of subtle pen things the Loser could go on about at length. For example, he likes pens you click to get the point out rather than those you turn or uncap because it signals a start to writing. He could talk about how the barrels of some pens unscrew in his hand and how annoying that is. He even is fussy about how snugly the point fits in the tip, and how the excess movement when the point it put to paper, though miniscule, bothers the Loser. 
He won't go on.  No one reads his blog already.

Why the Loser Collects Coins

If you're young, or old and have good things going on in your life, the reason the Complete and Total Loser keeps the wheat pennies, silver dimes and quarters, nickels with a P over the dome, and aging bills he finds in his loser job as a cashier at a store that sells nothing anyone needs will escape you.
But if you're around the Loser's age (over 50) and have as few years left as he does (none which, it seems, will be particularly good ones), you may be getting a sentimental, uninformed interest in history and understand the Loser's coin pursuit.
The quarter in the picture below is a rare find. If it were in good condition, which it isn't, it would be worth around $4.00. The most it could possibly be worth, according to the coin website, coinstudy.com, would be $33, and that's if it had been minted in Denver (it wasn't) and was uncirculated (duh, nope).
Look at all the little nicks and scratches on it and how worn it is, though. This coin has been out there for all or most of its 72 years. It survived piggy banks, holes in pockets, cracks in decks, wishing wells, and America's going off the silver standard (bad idea, it turns out) and switching to copper coins in 1965. It may have traveled the world and been spent by war heroes and future presidents, used as tips by great artists, and flipped by murderers. After all that, it somehow found its way to a cash register drawer, unnoticed by the Loser's coworkers, and ended up in the Loser's back left pocket, taken to his house and separated from other change. 
It will be stored as a keepsake in a box until the Loser dies and it's discovered by the workers hired to go through and dispose of the material objects he leaves behind.

Signals

The time is early last summer -- or was it late spring? -- and the Complete and Total Loser's mother, dead for seventeen days now, has summoned a tree service worker to talk about tree removals in the back yard. She has always been a high-maintenance control freak, a label she ignored rather than disputed, and having needless work done in and around the house is a way for her to get attention as her powers diminish.

She wants three perfectly healthy trees removed but her timing in having the tree man come is bad; the Loser, the family nature lover, is there. After the man examines the trees, the Loser asks the pertinent question: Is there any benefit to removing them? Are they diseased? Do they present any danger to anything? The answer is no on all counts and the Loser gets the man out after some minutes of heated discussion between he and his mother.

He ends the discussion after the tree worker has left with this:

"Mom, how much longer do you think you're going to live in this house?" Her health is failing precipitously and she's talked of moving to an assisted living facility.

"Five years," she says, though she doesn't say it like that. What she says is more like, "Five years?" Her eyes widen.

The Loser sees in her face at that moment a mix of helplessness and denial that pangs him but he suppresses at the time.

"OK," the Loser says. "Five years. So why not let those perfectly healthy trees stay there and let whoever moves in after you and Dad move decide what to do with them?"

She doesn't mention the trees again for what turns out to be the rest of her life.

The Loser is beginning to see that exchange and other things as signals of her impending demise. Some are subtle and just entering his consciousness. Others seemed obvious then but the Loser preferred to perceive them differently at the time. (What good does dwelling on gloom do?)

On one of his weekly visits the Loser's mother says, "I found something of yours the other day." It was a tiny wooden chest, a souvenir she'd gotten in Florida in the mid 1960s and given to the Loser. It's the size of a stack of four decks of playing cards and the Loser used to store his boyhood coin collection. It had been missing for decades and he'd thought of it sometimes but assumed that it was just one of those things that gets lost as the years pass. Where had she had it? Why did she find it now? Was she going through old things? If so, why?