Just before my senior year in college, I invested in a beautiful fountain pen: a Cross Townsend. I later learned that somehow I got the pen for almost half the actual price thought a pricing mistake or something. Now a new one costs roughly four times what I paid.

That pen accompanied me through Europe and was instrumental in recording thoughts about Strasbourg, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, and a number of other cities.

For twelve years, I’d never even misplaced it.

Today, at work, it was stolen. Or was it?

I had inadvertently left it by my computer, tucked in a notebook I’d been using for notes during a training session we’d had on Friday. After four of the lads had been using the computer, it was missing.

“Stealing is not beneath some of them,” I’d been told. Still, is that something one really wants to communicate to one’s students? “Alright, you jerks — I don’t trust any of you. Who stole my pen?!” Not the best way to build relationships with young men in need of help.

Instead, I gathered the lads together, told them that my pen was missing, and asked them if any of them saw it, to put it on my desk and then let me know it’s there.

A few minutes later, a boy came to ask me if I’d checked in all the desk drawers. “Maybe someone put it there — you know, like a joke.”

Sure enough, in the second drawer was the pen.

A prank? A bit of mercy? Misunderstanding or malice?

So much of our lives is inexplicable like that. Indefinable. Was this a reconsidered theft? Was it a joke? All I know is the pen was missing and then it wasn’t. Almost like I lost it…

Still, for safe measure, I unplugged my SanDisk memory stick and put it in my pocket.

I want to trust these boys, to give them the benefit of the doubt. But at what point does trust become naivety?