GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #594: A BOY SHOULD HAVE A KNIFE

 

Not too long ago I found my childhood knife, pictured above. I don't remember when Gramps gave it to me, but I'm pretty sure it was in first grade. Maybe third at the latest, but I think first. I remember he showed it to me, and I got excited because I was a child in the 'Eighties, and this is the kind of thing that did it for boys back then. That and Hot Wheels and boobs in horror movies and baseball. He told me that this had been his knife when he was a kid. He said, "A boy should have a knife." And so the boyhood knife was passed down.

I carried that thing with me everywhere. School, Cub Scout meetings, baseball games, you name it. I played in the woods a lot, and a knife could be pretty handy.

My cousin was there that day, and Gramps gave him one, too. It looked a lot different. I know it wasn't brand new, but it looked a lot more recent than the one he gave me. I think I got this one because I was the first grandson. My cousin was the second.

So my cousin's sister gave birth a while ago. I think that means her son is my second cousin. Not sure. I'm not big on categorization, in case you haven't noticed, so I don't really care to find out for sure. I think I have my cousin's knife somewhere, and it occurred to me that maybe my second cousin should have it if I find it. "A boy should have a knife," Gramps said to me.

But then I stopped and thought about all the mischief I got up to with that knife, and then I thought about how much time has passed since then. I'm talking decades. DECADES. The world has moved on. Some think that's a good thing, others a bad thing. I consider it a thing, nothing more. It's as inevitable as Thanos.

I thought about how different school probably is now. How if a boy carried a knife to school today, he would probably be arrested by noon and on the news by six. It wouldn't matter his intentions. Some things are forbidden now. That's probably a good thing.

So is it psychotic for a boy, who I think is in middle school now, to have a knife like the one pictured above?

(I almost typed junior high, but there is another thing that the sands of time has changed. And I'm not sure if he's in middle school. He probably is. But when I hit the age of 40 it started getting difficult for me to judge a young person's age. College kids look like they should be in middle school to me. High school kids look like they're ten to me. I don't know what it is. I wonder if that's the same way with others my age.)