Getting your pen license

Yes you heard me right, pen license. Sometimes Australia jut shocks me with their old-school, commonwealth-ish traditions and this one is now close to the top of my list. When a young lad or lass starts grade 5 ( second to last year of primary school), they get the option of buying pens. Before this there was only pencils on their book list. I can only imagine how exciting that must have been. I LOVE stationery shops and to be deprived of a whole row of supplies until grade five; the summer before must have been like Christmas and Hannukah all rolled into one!
Back to the facts; in grade five, you would continue to write in pencil until the teacher said you were neat enough for your pen license. Then you would be written down in a special book and the wonders of writing in pen would be open to you. So the reason this all came about is because Todd still does not have his pen license. He used the pen training wheels but to no avail. What are pen training wheels you ask? Those rubber triangles that force you to write correctly. I know, I know. Too cute.
In any case, Todd was never neat enough to get his pen license and he still says he is worried he might still get a smack on the knuckles for bad penmanship. The thing is, I think Todd's penmanship is pretty darn neat. I can't imagine how many people I know that would never have gotten their pen license...