Multi-Purpose Knives

Taking a break from the tedium of proofreading, I happened to be watching a special on the History Channel--yeah, we get cable for the first time in our marriage!--about knives. The narrator was drawing a distinction between our current era's use of diverse kinds of knives according to task and an earlier time's reliance on one type of knife to accomplish all purposes.

The fact alone is not that startingly, but the manner in which the narrator drove home the point (get it?) made me laugh. Speaking of the chaps of a bygone era, he said that the "same knife a man would use to stab his wife's lover, would be employed in eating because of its effectiveness in slicing through butter." Nice.

This, of course, reminded me our butcher knife back home in WP. Not until years later, after having utilized the blade countless times, did I overhear my mom mentioning in an offhand manner to a guest (probably after being asked "where she had purchased such a fine knife") that this same knife was a murder weapon brought as evidence in a trial in which my dad was involved as an attorney; after the trial was over, my mom apparently was able to secure the weapon for her kitchen. I can only imagine that the knife was as effective as a murder weapon as it was for slicing through chicken.