Re-enlisting in the Swiss Army
I finally have a Swiss Army knife again.

My wife thinks I tend to lose Swiss Army knives easily, which is unfair.

I forget exactly when I got my first SAK, and when I lost it. I probably had it from about 1982 to about 1988. I know I didn't have it before my first few years of grad school; I remember one of the physicists on my thesis experiment was a nun, not a habit-wearing one, the main visual clue was the big cross pin she wore, and I recall she had a SAK and the concept of a SAK-toting nun amused me. Anyway, I didn't have one then. And I know I still had it in early 1988, because I was then in a relationship with a woman whose SAK I coveted -- it had a couple useful features mine didn't. I think that first SAK of mine was a Camper (without the hook included on the present version). [Victorinox. I've always had Victorinox knives, even these days when my wife's aunt knows someone who works for Wenger. I have a Wenger watch, though.]

Sometime in 1988 or not much later than that I must have lost it. I don't remember how; I just remember thinking, well, at least I have an excuse to get a nicer one. In fact I think it was while I was still in that relationship, so I moved to the SAK leadership role with an Explorer, almost the only model short of the SwissChamp with a magnifier and a Phillips screwdriver.

That one I had through most if not all of the 1990s. And again my memory's a little hazy; I remember how I lost either that SAK or the next one, but I'm not sure which. Actually "losing" is not quite the right verb; I know where it is, to within a few feet. I just wasn't willing to go and get it. I spend a horrible Saturday back around 2001 putting insulation in the attic. It was a low crawl space attic, too low even to crawl, really, I mostly had to slither on belly or back. It was very hot, sweaty, filthy, fiberglassy work, and at the end of it I discovered my SAK had fallen out of my pocket at some point. So it was up there in the attic, presumably under a few inches of old loose insulation and a bat of new fiberglass, and I rejected out of hand the idea of going back up and searching for it. It's presumably still there, and since we sold the house last year, it can stay there.

So that was either the one I'd owned for over a decade, and the next one I bought I lost some other way, rather quickly, or it was the one I'd bought rather soon before to replace the one I'd owned for over a decade and lost some other way. I don't know.

Anyway, for Father's Day, or was it Valentine's, Heather got me a new SAK. A Huntsman, I think, I'm not sure. And not red. Its handle was a translucent sapphire blue. I like the red just fine, and I respect tradition, but I really thought the blue was pretty cool.

And I lost that one fast, too. I last remember having it while replacing the back door on Heather's grandfather's house, and I thought I'd probably mislaid it then, but another year of living in that house and, perhaps more relevantly, moving her grandfather and us out of that house, failed to turn it up. Perhaps it slipped down some particularly well-hidden crevasse, or maybe I just lost it some entirely different place.

I was not happy. I'd managed to get through most of the 1980s and 1990s on two SAKs, and now I couldn't seem to get through a year without losing one. I think worry over my ability to hang onto a knife for very long contributed to my not getting another one right away. The fact that cash has been a bit tight contributed, too, as did my contemplation of the possibility of going the Leatherman route instead. (Actually I did have a very cheapshit no-name Leatherman-style tool I'd gotten for free; I ended up leaving it at airport security on a recent trip when it turned up in my bag and I decided it wasn't worth bothering with taking it back to the car. It really was a piece of crap.)

So it's been almost two years, and I finally decided enough was enough, I was going to get another SAK. I decided to pick up a used on on eBay. Here's what I got. The seller described it as an "Explorer Specialty Plus", and I've never seen this model for sale before; it's an Explorer with some added blades like a saw, a file, and a probably-not-to-be-used-often fish scaler. It's the biggest and bulkiest SAK I've owned, by a lot, and on the whole I'd just as soon have a more compact one. But on the other hand, the saw blade on my old blue knife came in handy at times, so I like having that.

By the way, this seller sells lots of SAKs on eBay -- probably has a relationship with the local airport or something -- and I recommend him; the deal went smoothly, I got the knife really fast, and it's in good shape.