National Paper Clip Day

Is today, May 29th! Made of galvanized steel wire (sometimes coated with colored plastic), the paper clip’s design remains unchanged since the 1930s. Three bends create an oval within an oval. Automated paper clip machines spew out hundreds of clips per minute. Paper clips are manufactured in the United States and in Italy.

Before computers, before the Internet, paper clips were indispensable, used in office and individually, when stacks of paper and file cabinets were the normal way of keeping records, along with binding (a permanent method) or stapling (less permanent but difficult to take apart and re-sort).

A writer like me slowly evolved away from the typewriter and paper clip towards computers and backup storage of files. Still, as I moved from place to place, paper clips moved with me in boxes marked “Office Supplies.” I have a small basket of 103 paper clips on my desk. (Yes, I counted.) A writer has to know her facts. In a drawer along with pens and scissors and rulers and screen wipes are four boxes of paper clips, one hundred to a box. Five hundred and three unused paper clips.

That’s not exactly true. When I’m working on a project of printed multiple pages, I use a paper clip. When my writers’ group meets, I paper clip their chapters or scenes and subversively subtract five or nine paper clips from the total I own by sending them home with each author. At that rate, it will take approximately twenty years to get rid of all my paper clips.

I have five paper clips I will never give away. Years ago someone gave me a small package of five paper clips shaped like African animals: a giraffe, a lion, a leopard, a rhino, and of course, an elephant. They don’t function very well as paper clips. Their shapes get in the way of actually holding pages together.

Why don’t I just get rid of them?

Well, because someone, somewhere, had the idea of making paper clips, one by one, in the shape of African animals. Of changing something small and utilitarian into something larger. Of changing the way I look at the everyday things in my life.