Hear me out…

I was raised, as my family does, to fearfully respect our kitchen knives. Respect their productivity, respect their sharpness, but overall respect their ruthlessness. Even the mildest of disrespect for my family’s knives would earn you a nick of you were merely neglectful, and grievous harm if you spoke ill of their aptness.

Of course, when I moved out and set up my own kitchens I acquired my own knives and tried to teach them better. How I was the master, and I was the steel wright. I lavished them with hand baths and fresh oils. I used only the gentlest of hardwoods on their blades and protected them from the hrllscape of the dishwasher. We lived in serene peace, an harmonic existence of a mealwright and his band of merry Riveners.

And then one day, the Inheritance came. Grand Father had died, and his boning knives were my bequest. I was elated, but I would learn.

My friends, that old knife had a soul. Not an evil soul, but a soul that had goals. It was hard steel that took a keen, harsh edge. Bright and tense, like a silver bell on a crisp winter morning. Not Solingen steel, so pliable and yielding as it is fickle in use. Grandfather’s knives told you where to cut and if you hesitated, they would cut you instead in frustration. Impertinent things. Not evil, I would say. More, businesslike.

My mistake was to lay them with my other knives. Did you know knives talk? They do! They whisper to each other in their blocks at night when you are asleep. They whisper and they.learn from each other. A good papa hopes they learn the Art of their chef, but when you have a Bad Knife in the block? They learn that too.

Now, all of my knives are angry knives. Not angry at me, necessarily, but angry at their lot in my kitchen, to suffer my children’s abusive cooking lessons, my in-laws’ insistent prep work degradations, and (occasionally) my neglect.

They bit my wife tonight. Its a Message…