Classic Or Dud: When People Use Their Old Pocket Knife To Eat A Piece Of Fruit.

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usually an apple. it seems like it takes longer. or that there is some sort of ritual involved. and sometimes i feel like people are showing off in a weird way when they do this in public. plus, how hard is it to eat a friggin' apple. plus, i think i still have traumatic memories of my grandfather handing me fruit that he cut with the same knife he used to prepare fish bait with. plus, is it true that everyone in europe carries theie own hand-crafted knife with them to restaurants and that they wouldn't think of using anything else to cut their steaks with? i either saw this on t.v. or read a reverential article in the new york times about the art and artisans behind these hand-crafted personal steak knives and the old world tradition that keeps these craftsmen alive. or i could have just dreamed the whole thing up one night when i was sleeping wirh a nicotine patch on. maybe it was just everyone in france. maybe i just have a problem with people who carry knives around with them all the time even if it isn't part of their job to have one. when i was ten i carried one around. is it a huck finn thing? how often do they come in handy?

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:35 (nineteen years ago) link

dude i totally think theres another thread on this

― charleston charge (chaki), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:38 (nineteen years ago) link

post-9/11, this is a major dud!

― Mr. Harvey Weinstein (mr harvey weinstein), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:45 (nineteen years ago) link

9/11 didn't alleviate the hassle of unsliced apples pal

― jones (actual), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:47 (nineteen years ago) link

i looked up the word knife and there was a thread about someone who liked to eat with a knife. but not specifically fruit with an old pocket knife. unless knife wasn't in the thread title. we could always change it into a thread about ostentatious whittling.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:50 (nineteen years ago) link

eating with a knife! seeing people do this gives me full-body heebie-jeebies

― jones (actual), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:55 (nineteen years ago) link

I think it's charming. Probably because my dad did this when I was little.

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 21 March 2005 01:01 (nineteen years ago) link

see, our reaction can be based on nostalgia. teeny: dear old dad. scott: grandpa's fish-gut paws.

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 21 March 2005 01:03 (nineteen years ago) link

I started a thread about people eating fruit in eleavtors. Touchy about people eating fruit, aren't we? Yes! I don't really like people I barely know eating most types of fruit around me. Co-workers assaulting me with the scent of citrus oils. . .

― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Monday, 21 March 2005 01:05 (nineteen years ago) link

post-9/11, this is a major dud!

I think you're thinking of people eating fruit with box-cutters.

― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Monday, 21 March 2005 01:06 (nineteen years ago) link

There was an old warehouse manager at my first job who was always slicing fruit or a tomato with his pocketknife. One day he thought he'd show off and open a can of tuna with it... he was lucky to get by with only six stitches.

I don't go anywhere without my little swiss army knife unless I'm flying, and I even got it past security (twice) last time I flew.

― Curious George Finds the Ether Bottle (Rock Hardy), Monday, 21 March 2005 01:46 (nineteen years ago) link

crocodile dundee to thread

― i love scotch, scotchy scotch scotch (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 21 March 2005 02:21 (nineteen years ago) link

http://www.auntjudysattic.com/Antiques-Collectibles/knife-2b.jpg

― i love scotch, scotchy scotch scotch (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 21 March 2005 02:23 (nineteen years ago) link

I carried a handy dandy pocket knife with me until I lost it. Now I am temporarily carrying, a........BOXCUTTER!!! but don't be alarmed. I actually open boxes with it. Never did the fruit thing with either of them, though.

― jim wentworth (wench), Monday, 21 March 2005 02:32 (nineteen years ago) link

One of my co-workers does this, and it is really weird.

― webber (webber), Monday, 21 March 2005 09:23 (nineteen years ago) link

I always carry a pocket knife and use it quite often, for example to prepare guacamole at my desk. Yes, I'm considered a bit wacky by co-werkers. It also comes in handy for cutting up cake at birthday FAPs.

The idea of everyone in Europe carrying personalised steak knives is pretty funny, even the idea of everyone in Europe regularly eating steak. I guess that would be classed technically as 'an old French man thing', but I've never seen anyone whip out their own cutlery in a restaurant - a bit cheeky, no?

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Monday, 21 March 2005 13:27 (nineteen years ago) link

Also u+k: when you need to open a bottle of wine, you need to open a bottle of wine, and that's where the corkscrew attachment on a pocket knife comes in handy. It's more a drunkard than a Huck Finn thang.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Monday, 21 March 2005 13:29 (nineteen years ago) link

I carry a mini-swiss army knife. My only bad experience (other than cutting myself with it lots) was getting to the checkout desk at Prestwick ariport and being told I couldn't take it on with me. So I bought an envleope and some stamaps and posted it to myself. Naturally, the knife wasn't in the letter when I received it :(

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 21 March 2005 13:43 (nineteen years ago) link

Scott, you are psychic. Yesterday I stopped at Cr0nig's and bought some apples and was thinking about how my mom always has a pocket knife at the ready. She uses it to clean her fingernails, and then to slice fruit. Sometimes she'll take a wooden matchstick and whittle a toothpick out of it. Do you remember the xmas when she gave us all sharp things we couldn't take back on the plane: pocket knives, scissors, tools? I think she has some slight scorn for those without a knife in their pocket. Sometimes she wears a special leather knife holster on her belt.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Monday, 21 March 2005 13:51 (nineteen years ago) link

My big ol' swiss army knife that I used to take camping, I had one blade on it in particular JUST for cutting-food/eating with. It always has seemed a little hard-ass to me, which is part of the charm I guess. However, I always made a point to have a separate knife for gutting fishes. Fuck a bunch of fish entrail residue on your apple slices, blech!

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 21 March 2005 14:27 (nineteen years ago) link

Maria, you're allowed to have knives etc. in your hold luggage, just not in hand luggage.

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 21 March 2005 14:34 (nineteen years ago) link

Classic when you want to peel an orange but not get pith under your nails.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Monday, 21 March 2005 14:57 (nineteen years ago) link

Do you people not WASH yr knives after cleaning fish with them? Yecch.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Monday, 21 March 2005 15:01 (nineteen years ago) link

fuck washing a knife

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 21 March 2005 15:03 (nineteen years ago) link

I think people who carry pocket knives just wipe the blade on their dungarees.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Monday, 21 March 2005 16:53 (nineteen years ago) link

I carry both a knife and a handkerchief. Always. Except on planes. For the reasons Liz mentions as well as many others to do with both chivalry and with being a drunkard.

I used to also have a flashlight and an umbrella at all times; they got cumbersome.

― The Mad Puffin (The Mad Puffin), Monday, 21 March 2005 17:09 (nineteen years ago) link

it is one of life's great mysteries that an apple's worth of apple slices aren't remotely as filling as an apple eaten the regular way.

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 21 March 2005 17:41 (nineteen years ago) link

yes but the taste

― jones (actual), Monday, 21 March 2005 18:28 (nineteen years ago) link

http://www.houston-north-gallery.ns.ca/images/james_houston/Ju4547.jpg

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 21 March 2005 20:55 (nineteen years ago) link

'The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table; the voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured; the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterward with a pocket knife, soon forced us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour was to be anything rather than an hour of enjoyment.' From 'Domestic Manners of the Americans' by Frances Trollope, 1832

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:09 (nineteen years ago) link

I actually like to carry a knife, but seeing people do the fruit and pocket knife thing makes me say ewwww. Never more so than one time in Germany: I was staying in a youth hostel and one morning at breakfast a bearded man wearing shorts, a wooly jumper, sandals and a hat brought his breakfast to the table where I was seated (there were a couple of empty tables available, so my guard was already up). He took out a pocket knife and started eating his breakfast with it (fruit and cheese - German breakfast). Now he had clearly seen the cutlery as he loaded his tray but had chosen not to take any. I wonder why someone would do such a thing as choose to eat with a pocket knife when it's not a necessity - it seems different in a situation where cutlery is available; it's not like he was camping or whatever, as in some of the examples above). Is it about some strange need to feel self-sufficient? If so, why bother with the plate, the chair, the other trappings of civilisation. It stuck me that it was a back-to-nature/simple-things-of-life thing; it wouldn't surprise me at all if that guy was also a naturist.

― jadrenos (jadrenos), Friday, 25 March 2005 20:43 (nineteen years ago) link

i think I did this for about two weeks after I went to camp as a kid for one summer, also around the same time I saw some old movie where shirley temple meets Lincoln and he eats an apple this way.

I carry a knife now to stab fuckers with.

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 25 March 2005 20:52 (nineteen years ago) link

is it true that everyone in europe carries theie own hand-crafted knife

Is this anything like everyone in England only getting one spoon for their life?

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 25 March 2005 20:57 (nineteen years ago) link

firstly, it is classic.

second, this personal steak knives thing is one of the greatest things i have ever read on ilx.

third: i think it's more of a familiarity thing than a showing off thing.

― sanderbelt, Friday, 25 March 2005 21:03 (nineteen years ago) link

the pocket knife thing seems silly to me. yeah, you're tough, you have a weapon at the ready...why not just bite into the apple, though? or use the butter knife, which generally works as well?

― Maria (Maria), Saturday, 26 March 2005 02:11 (nineteen years ago) link

two years pass...

A colleague asked me for a knife, and when I said no and what do you want one for, said he wanted to eat an apple. I suggested he just bite into the apple and he looked at me like I was some sort of eccentric.

― braveclub, Friday, 11 May 2007 11:56 (sixteen years ago) link

i think you did the right thing. i wouldnt entrust a knife to alex either

― 696, Friday, 11 May 2007 11:58 (sixteen years ago) link

Using someone else's pocketknife is like using someone else's toothbrush.

― Rock Hardy, Friday, 11 May 2007 13:03 (sixteen years ago) link

but bloodier

― river wolf, Friday, 11 May 2007 13:04 (sixteen years ago) link

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