It’s Time to Give This Pocket Attention
It was 1995, the year that I turned 10 years old, when I received my first pocket knife from my dad. That was his random rule, when you hit double digits, you’re responsible enough to have a pocket knife. There was probably no logic to this, but it seemed like a reasonable time to step up the responsibility game by giving a 10 year old a blade he could carry in his pocket.
My dad always carried a red Swiss Army knife, one with the awl in particular. I enviously watched him use that knife for everything. Before the formidable 10th birthday, we went on countless camping trips where it seemed like you couldn’t survive without a pocket knife. Sharpen a stick for marshmallows? No problem. Open a can of beans? Whip out the can-opening tool. Need to clean the dirt from under your fingernails? Use the awl. He let me do the stick sharpening from time to time to get the feel of the blade in my hands. He taught me how to make sure to always point the blade away from myself and not near other people. He also taught me to make damn sure that none of my body parts are in the way of the blade when it springs itself back into the body as I closed it. His double digit age requirement seemed to be validated when my younger, who is 4 years younger, ended up NOT making damn sure body parts were out of the way at a friends house one day. There was blood, there were stitches, and the friendship was never the same and my dad’s rule vindicated.
My dad’s pocket knife of choice was never too small and never too big. If you’re going to carry a tool in your pocket everyday, you don’t want it to weigh down your pants. His red pocket knife had the following tools:
Bottle opener
Wire stripper
Large blade
Small blade
Phillips screwdriver
Toothpick
Large screwdriver
Awl
Can opener
Small screwdriver
Tweezers
This was the perfect balance of usefulness and size and it’s exactly what I wanted. At 10 years old in 1995, there was nothing but lint and the occasional candy wrapper in my pockets. No wallet, no smartphone, no keys. When I dropped my pocket knife in my pocket, I felt a sense of adventure, I could do and fix anything. I would go to the forest down the street from my house, carve my initials into trees and sharpen sticks just because I could. After I ate dinner, I would pick the chicken nugget out of my teeth with the toothpick and put it right back in the body of the knife. It was mine, not my dad’s, not my brother’s.
Just like my dad, I would lose the knife from time to time. I especially lost it when I was wearing dress pants. The polyester dress pants pocket is like a slip-n-slide for Swiss army knives. It would inevitably slide out of my pocket, unbeknownst to me, and be left behind at the Bennigan’s restaurant for some lucky busboy to find. This has happened to many of my pocket knives throughout my life and 25 years later I’ve only now figured out the best solution.
Now it’s 2021 and I still carry a pocket knife everyday. For you #EDC fans, I carry the following:
Nomatic Front Pocket Wall (by far the best wallet I’ve ever had)
Keys (I wish I had less, feeling like a part-time janitor)
Pixel 4
I keep it simple and everything has its place. Pixel 4 goes in the front left pocket, screen faces my leg, top of the phone faces down so when I pull it out of my pocket, I get a glance at the screen in its correct orientation. Wallet goes in the front right pocket, I hate wallets in the back pockets, feels like I’m balancing one ass-cheek on a boulder. Keys in the right pocket as well but taken out and hung on dedicated key rack as soon as possible. Now, the knife has a special spot, one I only figured out recently and has prevented me from losing my knife since 2013. There is a pocket in most jeans that is underused and underappreciated, the “watch” pocket. This pocket’s origin dates back to 1879 when Levi’s introduced in every pair of their jeans as a place to store your watch. Not sure how many people are carrying around pocket watches anymore but I’m sure they have some difficulty telling the time with that monocle they’re wearing.
It’s the perfect pocket for my pocket knife. It’s snug enough to keep the knife from slipping out and it’s super accessible, I’m not fighting my wallet and keys to get access to my knife. I use my knife everyday for SOMETHING; opening Amazon boxes, replacing batteries in kid’s toys, filing down a sharp finger nail, and popping open a bottle of beer. The tool that gets the most use, by far, is the file. Not to file things down, but to use the pointy end of the file. Sometimes I just need a pointy end for things such as tiny screws but don’t want to use the knife in case I slip on the thing I’m working on. Don’t want to end up like my brother.
Recently, I’ve been wearing some new shorts because there are two seasons in Florida; Summer and Pre-Summer. These particular shorts don’t have this magical “watch” pocket and I’m sad to report that I lost my pocket knife last week, it had a good 8 year run. I missed it so much that I purchased the same exact one again. I’m also either going to burn these shorts alive or get a seamstress to add this pocket and rename it to the knife pocket.
What do you use the “knife” pocket for?