It's a Wonderful Knife

That might not be true. I have no evidence of ghosts. As a matter of fact, I don't believe it was ghosts at all, just forgetfulness on my part.

I was in Dead Dog Cave one Saturday, in West Virginia. This was so named because the cave entrance was used by a landowner in the 1940's as a garbage pit for his growing collection of dead dogs. There's a possibility he was a dogcatcher. There's a possibility he just had a lot of dead dogs.

To get anywhere past the first room, you have to crawl through the Boneyard. It's a round room about three feet high, with a whole lot of muddy sticks on the ground. I figured one or two were real bones: having them all be bones after fifty years of people crawling through would be a tad hard to swallow. Once inside, I saw that they WERE all dog bones, dozens and dozens of them. This was not a cave to take a beginner to. The ooky factor is high.

Back outside, I joyfully cut the laces off my caving boots. They were the original laces, and a foot or so on either end had snapped off in various caves. They also were stuck in knots tighter than the sheets at a hotel. The boots were flopping off my feet like I was in second grade trying on my dad's shoes. I used my Swiss Army Knife to decapitate the knots, and then threaded through some new shoelaces. I threw the old laces in my giant caving Tupperware tub with my muddy cave clothes, since I didn't want to litter.

The changing room for Dead Dog Cave is the driveway of the owner's farm. There weren't any street lights, just the almost nonexistent moonlight. I had to feel around to find my old shoelaces. The rest of my gear was big enough and smelly enough so I could find it blindfolded.

Except my knife.

I noticed it was missing Sunday, doing four little caves on the way back home. Not in my pocket, not in the tub, not on the ground anywhere by the Sunday caves. I checked my pocket again, and the tub again, and the cars we took down there. I checked my pocket again. Tom Hanks: volleyball :: me : my knife.

I had that knife (creatively named 'my knife') since junior year of high school. It was 100% gadget, and 0% killin' weapon. It was not perceived as a weapon by anyone. I was attending a murder trial with my journalism class back in college, where they search everyone for weapons. A guard there was giving a thorough search to a middle aged woman's purse. I told the other guard I had a Swiss Army Knife, and asked if I could check it and pick it up at the end of the day. He just waved me through, knife and all. The search of the purse continued unabated, and I walked through with my deadly weapon. I also went on several flights with the knife in my carry on bag.

OK, we're walking into definite no-fun zone, so let's leave any discussion of airline safety and move onto the fun stuff my sport utility knife did. It had 15 functions, spread across 9 'blades' and three assorted thingamabobbers. No matter how many robots and hovercars I'll see before I die, I will never stop being amazed by all the stuff engineers can cram into something the size of a mozzarella stick.

• Big blade: This thing couldn't pop a balloon, but God bless it anyway. Enough sawing, and it would get through whatever needed cutting. The need for a really sharp stabbing object is minimal for me, so the knife became the neglected main character in the variety show of the other blades.
• Little blade: Big blade's neglected younger brother, just as dull and half as prominent. The Frank Stallone of my pocket.
• Scissors: the most used item on my knife. Swiss Army Knife scissors are the world's greatest way to cut fingernails. Complete control, good clean cuts every time you snip. For eight years, I never had a single instance where my fingernails were like diving boards because I had no access to the fulcrumed torture devices that standard nail cutters are.
• Phillips head screwdriver: this looked like a little Washington Monument, notched at the end. They probably could have crammed a nail file or a blowtorch in that shaft the way they conserve space, but it was a whole blade just for Phillip.
• Flat head screwdriver/bottle opener/wire stripper: The bottle opener never opened on the first try, but it would get a beer bottle open. I actually had a game of quickdraw with another knife owner when someone walked by and asked for a bottle opener. The flat end of the bottle opener doubled as a screwdriver. A little notch on the inside was for the wire stripper (never used).
• Can opener/little flat head screwdriver: there's not much call for a can opener in the 21st century. Juicy Juice, that's it. The little screwdriver made for just about every screw turning possibility, except for helix screws and eyeglass fixing.
• Awl: How many times have you needed a leather punching device, only to find that your utility blade doesn't have one? Well, you should have come to me. I only used it to punch leather once (making a hole in a watchband for a girl with a skinny wrist) but it became my all purpose poking knife. Need a tool to stab at the glob of grease or goop? Use the awl.
• Magnifying glass: The conceived purpose of this, as far as I know, is to make a campfire without matches via focusing the sunlight. I don't build many fires, and when I do, I have matches, and it's usually night. My only uses were to make small print a tiny bit bigger for twenty seconds, with eventual folding back because I'd have to read the entire book through something smaller than a dime. And reading all the states names on the back of five dollar bills.
• Corkscrew: the classic useless Swiss Army Knife item. What does it say about the function of the Swiss Army that their premier military invention has a knife that can't cut wet dirt but three blades devoted to opening alcoholic beverages?
• Keychain: just a metal ring. I never used it because I figured having two pounds of metal hanging off the steering column wouldn't help my car any.
• Tweezers: The tweezers and toothpick are more a mark of pride than anything else. They both have their uses, but the key is to keep the knife completely intact, with these two detachable buggers in their slots. Lose them once, they're gone forever.

• Toothpick: I had no problem using my toothpick, since I didn't lend the toothpick out to anyone. My friend Laura thought this was disgusting, since the knife sat in my pocket and got infused with "butt juices". If butt juices do exist, then screw the knife, I'm worried about my pack of gum.

My knife had a lot of stuff, but it did not have pliers. That's the big difference between a Swiss Army Knife and a Leatherman, the Apple Computers of the utility knife world. The Leatherman was developed by a Swiss Army Knife owner who wanted pliers in there. He went inventin' and seven years later he's got a device with pliers that unfold like a butterfly knife, with all the other gadgets crammed into the pliers' handles.

Newer Swiss Army Knives also have pliers in there, a smaller version than a Leatherman, but a bolt loosener nonetheless. Both Leathermans and Swiss Army Knives also have a lot of super neato stuff my old knife didn't. An eyeglass screwdriver, that screws into the empty space of the corkscrew. A pen. A compass. A sawblade. A watch. You might ask: do I need any of that stuff in a knife? The question should be: how much of that super neato stuff can I find all in one knife?

Another question: do I get a Leatherman, or a Swiss Army Knife?

They both run rather pricy. Basic models are $20-$40, and can go into the low hundreds for the real advanced stuff. I had no idea how much of it was manufacturing costs, and how much was profit, but it'd be worth it for a Transformer knife with a fishing rod, shovel and toothbrush in it.

My ultimate decision (at least for the time being, which probably negates the word ultimate) was made by a dollar store. I was there browsing for wedding presents, and what do I see but utility knives. Cheapo knives, stuff I never bothered to even think about. They were probably ten bucks and probably had three blades, none of the battery testers or paint brushes that the real knives had.

I looked closer at one of the knives. Eighteen functions, three more than my real knife. About the same look as my old knife, only in translucent blue, like an iMac. And it was a dollar.

One dollar. The price of hangers in the next aisle. I was without a knife for two months, and I could have had a replacement for a dollar. Even if the knife sucked, at a dollar, the damn thing was disposable, a rental knife until I find a real one.

Qualitywise, this knife is not Swiss Army quality. The main blade opens to the left. The toothpick's thin enough to slip through the gaps in my teeth like dental floss. The scissors bend fingernails instead of cutting them. One blade is a featureless metal stick, which will be poked into goo at my first run in with goo. Another is a featureless metal stick with a hole in the top. It has two sawblades for some reason, both dull as Henry James novels.

But at a dollar, I can't complain. In fact, I advise everyone to hit the local dollar store, and stock up on these knives. Stick one in your car, one in your purse, one in your desk. Keep one in the fridge, and another in the freezer. Hold off on supersizing, and get one of the best grown up toys you can get.

And if anyone's in a cave haunted by dogs, keep an eye out for my knife. It should still have the tweezers and toothpick.

I now have four Swiss (and not so Swiss) army knives: the classic, the dollar edition, a new Swiss one I got for Christmas, and another gift someone found at a thrift shop for two dollars after reading this. I can arm a platoon now, so long as they're just opening wine bottles.