Heart and Mind

Pocket Knife Issues

Have you ever needed a pocket knife and not had one on you? It happens to me pretty regularly, since I rarely carry one. I certainly am not a habitual knife carrier.

But I'd like to be. They come in handy, and even though they've been around forever, I'm still kind of fascinated by the concept of a knife that you can carry in your pocket. A knife...in your pocket...completely safe. That's kind of cool.

Carrying a pocket knife is kind of old school. You know, like from a generation where a man also carried a pocket comb and a handkerchief. My grandfather always had a knife (and a handkerchief). And my father usually has a knife on him (and usually a comb, too.)


Anyway, I carried a knife around with me all day on Saturday and it was really great, because I actually had a need for it three times. And it was so damn convenient to just reach into my pocket to produce a nice blade.

I thought to myself, "I am just going to have to start carrying a knife."

But I probably won't.

For starters, I already carry too much stuff in my pockets. I carry an ever-growing collection of keys; my keyring almost looks like that of a janitor. Lots of keys, already taking up valuable real estate in my pocket.

I also have the wallet all the time, and these days I also have the cell phone, which is awkward in its own way, because I'm always afraid it will break in my pocket, so I often hold it or lay it on the desk or whatever. (In the past, like in high school, I also always carried a saline-filled case for my contact lenses and a hair brush, but that's another story.)

So, I reason that if I add a knife to the equation, it will just be too much.

Additionally, I've always kind of dug the concept of the Swiss Army style knife, where there are a whole variety of blades and contraptions, and those can get kind of big. When I was a kid, I always reasoned that having the knife with the most contraptions was the best one to have. It was like Batman's utility belt or something, but in knife-form. I had a pretty big knife, but my dream was to have the one at the sportsman's counter that had everything. And those knifes were huge. The bigger the knife, the more space it takes up in your pocket.

Well the knife that I carried last weekend and sporadically throughout this week is not a monster-sized one, but it is in that style and has a whole bunch of blades. Now, here's what's funny about these cool multi-tasking knives: despite the feeling of power you get from having a mini-toolbox in your pocket, most of the blades you'll never use. I mean, maybe if you're camping in the woods you might need some of the blades, but probably not and they're certainly not needed in the course of your everyday life.

Consider...

All those Swiss Army knives have a can opener. When the hell are you going to need a can opener "on the go?" They don't even work that great, so I'd probably opt to eat something else (something not in a can) if I was somehow in the situation where there was no non-knife-type can opener around.

They usually also have one or two types of saw blades. Again, how often do you need to saw twigs or something when you're not at home where a good, full sized pruning saw is not readily available?

There's usually a nail file, but...come on...if you do file your nails (and I don't—I bite 'em off), wouldn't you wait until you got home or until you can use a better, more comfortable nail file? In other words, filing your nails is not an emergency kind of thing that has to be tended to immediately.

There's always a bottle opener, too, but unless you're a beer drinker—which I'm not—you'll probably never need that, either. And most hardcore beer drinkers I know usually already have a bottle opener on their keychains.

Now, on the top of bottle opener, you get a little flat-head screwdrivers. And, surprise, surprise...that's something that might come in handy every now and then. But the problem is that it's so "lightweight" that any kind of screw-job of significance would probably wreck your knife pretty good. (I know from experience.) So I usually don't use that for screw duties that require more elbow grease then I can achieve with a coin or something. The same thing applies for the Phillips head screw driver.

Oh, and how could I forget? The monster knives—the kings of these "all gadget contraptions"—tend to have forks and spoons attached that stick out of the casing and make them even bulkier than they already are. I guess having a spoon might come in handy every now and then when I get stuck with a snack and no utensils. But my life basically still feels pretty complete despite those rare occasions where I'm in that pickle.

To be honest, the only "blades" I find of significant value include occasionally the scissors, the tweezers, and—99% of the time—the knife blade that is actually a knife blade. Why? Because a 99% of the time, all you need from your knife in every day life is to cut string or some other easy-to-snip item. And, of course, for that you only need one knife-style knife-blade. These pocket knives usually come with a few of them of varying sizes.

I'm going to try to carry my oversized knife around in the next few weeks, even though I've just discussed why it's a bad idea and why I'll be carrying way more stuff that I'm going to need. I guess it makes me feel powerful to know that I could fend for myself if I got stuck somewhere, hungry and holding a can of unopened Beefaroni. Even though it won't happen.

Big game knife carriers and connoisseurs will probably tell you otherwise. They'll tell you why you need to have all that stuff. But I'm sticking to my story. If I find that anything changes and I suddenly see the value of having a cork screw on me 24-7, I will humbly report my findings in a future blog entry.

posted by Steve @ 10:03 PM