bread knife. danger.

I have a long history with bread knives. It should be no surprise that I had a run in just yesterday. I know my long lost bread knife has been plotting his revenge ever since that fateful day several years ago.

My dad and I took a trip to Missoula a little less than a year after 9/11. It was a short trip, and I took a shoulder bag so I wouldn’t have to check anything. We flew, uneventfully, from Atlanta to St. Paul to Missoula, had a nice tour of the area, and showed up at the Missoula airport ready to travel home. Back in those days, we had our carry-on items scanned when we changed planes so both Atlanta and St. Paul had their way with my luggage. Nevertheless, I was unaware that in my pre-trip haste, I had failed to unpack a side pocket that I used during my large-fruit-eating days in Asheville. (Not sure what precipitated it, but I was totally into melons and cantaloupes… that’s another story.)

When the woman behind the x-ray machine ran my bag twice, I hadn’t the slightest expectation that minutes later she would be brandishing my 13-inch long bread knife saying in a loud, Southern voice, “Honey, I just can’t let you carry this on the plane with you!” Yes, she was southern and in Montana, but I didn’t wait to swap stories on how we southerners were drawn to these mountains. My fellow passengers were beginning to stare at me like I meant to do them harm. That southern woman was rattling off options about mailing and putting it in luggage, but I just kept saying in my loudest hushed voice, “I don’t care. I don’t need it. Please, just throw it away.”

And now my time has run out. My abandoned bread knife sent word that I should be punished for discarding him so quickly when the going got tough. Yesterday, my current bread knife was given the “go” sign, and this is what happened:




And, no, I can't explain why there are so many cuts. Mean, mean bread knife.

So, Mom, go get Dad and have him look at the picture (click on it to make it bigger). It's a tiny cut. It’s a day later, there’s no infection, and I’m going to be just fine. That bread knife on the other hand…