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We sure are strange
sometimes. Most of the time, we make sense. We’re “sensible” and we
do things for a reason. But there are times when we do things that
make no sense at all, and we don’t care.
Just take pocketknives, for instance. Most men wouldn’t leave the
house without one. I sure wouldn’t. In fact, I’ll bet if you stopped
10 men in business suits on the sidewalk in New York City or London
and asked them to turn their pockets out for you, at least eight of
them would be carrying a pocketknife. And one of them would be bound
to call the police because of your weird request.
Why is this, do you suppose? If you asked each of them, you’d get a
heming and hawing and they’d probably say they need it for
sharpening pencils. Of course, they don’t “use” pencils any more,
and if they did, there’d be an electric sharpener to bring them to a
point.
But the bottom-line truth is, we aren’t sure just why we feel naked
without a little, dull, old pocket knife on us. The truth goes back
before history, before human speech, before microwave ovens. We have
that stupid little knife on us because with it, we’re armed. Yes. We
carry one because men have always carried some kind of sharp object
for protection. It might have been an obsidian knife, a steel
rapier, an Italian dagger, a Scottish skean dhu, but it was on us,
because we felt more secure with it.
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Men with sharp objects survived to
sire other men who carried sharp objects, so that’s why, a million
years later, we have that dumb little pocket knife with us that
couldn’t spread Cheez Whiz on a cracker.
But don’t leave that thing home, because without it, you’d be
helpless against the world.
[Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
Brought to you by
readers of my next book, “Cock-a-Doodle Death.” Both of them.
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