Why Men Love Knives
Making hunters feel competent since 2 million B.C.
July, 2004

There's something about a good knife that speaks to you on a primal level. It's been this way for about 21/2 million years, ever since David E. Petzal was just a gleam in his papa's eye and some nameless hunter-gatherer first began pounding rocks together. Anthropologists say we first made tools for two purposes: pounding and cutting. Your pounding tool is simplicity itself; pretty much any rock will serve to crush a mastodon bone to get at the marrow. But you need something very specific-"a sharp edge-"to butcher an animal or scrape a hide. Imagine that first hominid flaking a piece of rock into a shaped edge that fit his paw. Imagine the delight in his face as he hefted it and discovered its powers. I bet you anything he smiled, elbowed the nearest guy, and showed off his creation. And the message-"verbal or not-"has remained unchanged from that day to this: Got me a nice little cutting rock here. Check it out.

I understand this feeling in its totality. Not long ago, I picked up a very nice "rock-¿ indeed. Mine was a serious folder, an Emerson CQC-7. It's more knife than anybody but a Special Operations guy could justify. But it's not more knife than I wanted. I liked the way it felt in my hand. The Teflon-coated blade is just over 3 inches long and partially serrated for cutting rope or other fibrous material. It has a Tanto point that can punch through steel. Its handle is an epoxy-fiberglass laminate known in the trade as G-10 that almost seems to adhere to your hand. The knife comes with a clip that positions it head-down in your pocket so that it's in the right position when you draw it, and there's a little round thumb plate affixed to the blade for one-handed opening. The click of the blade locking into position is authoritative. It's a sound that says, I can handle this.

The knife is pure function with no concession to appearance. Because of that, it is all the more beautiful. Like the Parthenon, there's not a truly straight line in it. It cost...let's just say, enough that you might be tempted to pay cash so your wife doesn't see the figure on the credit-card bill. You could easily field dress an elephant with this thing. Heck, you could probably build a house. It makes me feel more competent than I actually am. A good knife will do this to you.

The only problem is that it's sending me into a severe funk because there is nothing in my life that justifies a knife of this seriousness. I am not in the Special Forces. I am a middle-aged bald guy who lives in the suburbs with a wife and two kids, a big mortgage, and a 1991 Honda Civic. Last night, with my new knife in my pocket, my younger daughter and I fell asleep in her bed after reading The Poky Little Puppy. And not long ago, an attractive young woman held the door for me as I entered a store behind her. When I thanked her, she said, "You're welcome, sir.-¿ That "sir-¿ said things that no man who still has his own teeth and knees should have to hear.

So maybe my acquiring this knife is a reminder to myself that beneath this veneer of normalcy there still lives a hunter-gatherer whose every day is a struggle against a world filled with sudden and unforeseen dangers. True, saber-toothed cats no longer tread in the night, waiting to pounce, but there are challenges nonetheless. Just last week, for example, I was setting out the garbage cans at the end of the driveway when I ran into my neighbor, Dave, who was doing the same. Dave is about my age and is suffering from the effects of having recently traded in a sweet little pocket-rocket convertible for a green minivan. There we were, two housebroken hominids with lawns full of dandelions, wrangling our garbage cans. Then Dave began stomping the cardboard box from a new baby gate, as the trash guys won't pick up any container that hasn't been flattened to un