I carry a pretty serious little pocket knife. I use it less often than once a day but certainly a number of times per week, for opening packages, breaking down boxes for recycling, smoothing off a chipped nail, cutting a hanging thread, and slicing an apple. I don’t feel comfortable when I don’t have it on me.
I doubt the knife would ever do me much good as a weapon (“Wait a minute, mugger, hold on while I get my knife out and open it, would you?”), but I feel better carrying it anyway. I am prepared for a lot of things, whether it’s slicing my way out of a plastic prison or blazing a trail on short notice. Ah, and opening presents.
When I’m not wearing jeans with a pocket, I still have a knife in my purse. That one is more delicate and less businesslike—just one of your tiny folding knives with one blade, a nail file, and a miniature pair of scissors in it. I pull that one out when I want to respond to a cutting emergency in a somewhat more ladylike fashion.
I started carrying a knife back in my twenties so I could cut up fruit I took to work for lunch and also trim broken fingernails. But it actually started with my grandmother, who told me once proudly that her husband and all her sons carried pocket knives and that “a man isn’t a man unless he carries a knife.” I always admired my father’s bone-handled pocket blade. It never occurred to me back then that my grandmother’s remark did not extend to little girls, so I got myself a knife too. It was only a little purse knife then, but when I bought the Gerber I started actually keeping it in my pocket all the time.