The Pocket Knife

It's More About Guns

When I was a kid, around age six, the one thing I knew I wanted more than anything else was a pocket knife. I grew up in a rural area and everyone around me, especially the older and cooler kids, carried a pocket knife.

The Case model was the standard issue. Compact. Affordable. Multi-purpose. The prototypical one looked something like this:

Why three blades were needed I never understood, because most people used the same blade for any purpose. Or I should say, every purpose. Can’t open your cafeteria milk carton? Need to clean your fingernails? Need to carve some shit on your desk, slice an apple, whittle a stick? Lance a boil? Spread mayo on your sandwich? Same pocket knife, same blade.

Of course I begged and begged my family for a pocket knife. Every birthday, every Christmas. I want a pocket knife. To this day I can’t remember who bought me the first one, but somebody did. A very small model. Probably assuming, well, how bad could he hurt himself with this.

Then one afternoon I was at my cousin’s house. For whatever reason my cousin hadn’t got home from school yet so I decided to sit in his room playing with my pocket knife. Pulling out all the blades. Looking at them. Thinking about how the next day, in the cafeteria, that milk carton didn’t stand a chance. And all the cool kids would see me make it my bitch.

Somehow, in closing all the blades, I sliced my index finger. It was basically a paper cut, but I was mortified. Not because I couldn’t get my finger to stop bleeding (I quickly retreated into the bathroom), but because I thought if this was ever discovered, my days of carrying my pocket knife were over as quickly as they started.

Eventually my finger stopped bleeding. Nobody ever noticed. But I was no longer interested in having the pocket knife. Not around the house. Not to school. Not anywhere. I’m certain as I type this that I stuck the thing in my nightstand drawer and never touched it again.

As the years went on, the pocket knives the cool kids were carrying started getting bigger. They started being worn on the belt in a sheath as opposed to being carried in the pocket. And they stopped being used for common purposes, like milk opening and nail cleaning. The display on the belt seemed to me enough.

I often wondered, did the lack of use come into fashion because other people had sliced their finger in their cousin’s bedroom? Or was this all for show in the first place? I wanted to look like a farmer, not a predator.

Maybe this is why I now view a displayed knife as a threat. In the same way that I see a displayed firearm as a threat. Even in the mindset of self-defense, this is someone telling me, I have a dangerous thing here that I can hurt you with. This is not for hunting or sport. This is a signal to stay away.

I also know that if some of these people hurt themselves, or someone else, or someone else uses it to hurt someone, they really have no risk of it being taken away. Of anyone saying, yeah, you’re a good kid, yeah, this was a crazy accident, but maybe you aren’t ready for this right now.

When gun owners say to me, no restrictions on assault-style weapons, no limits on how many guns you can own, how private sales without background checks are all well and good, how even having to purchase liability insurance for guns is totally unreasonable, I feel like maybe they aren’t ready for this right now, anymore than I was when I hid my cut in my cousin’s bathroom.

I’ll share my actual gun story in a future post. Because my pocket knife story covers the late 80s/early 90s. Just a few years later, I had to learn my lesson again. I wasn’t ready for that either.