Around Here

I’ve seldom been without a pocket knife, attached as a fob to my keyring. My last one, adorned with a Dallas Cowboys team logo, was given to me as a gift. It had only one blade, with a nicely serrated edge, sharp. But something had gone wrong. It appeared to have lost the pin on which it pivoted, and would not open.  Before that I had a handsome and compact chrome one, with several accessories including a corkscrew and tiny scissors that actually worked. It was given to me by a contractor who'd done some work at the condo. “Give me a coin,” he said when he handed it to me.  “A coin?”
  “So it won’t cut the friendship.”  I gave him a quarter. He gave me the knife. It was taken from me a couple of years later by the security guard at political rally in Fort Myers where Joe Biden gave the keynote. It was either that, or be turned away. Could I get it back? No. There was obviously no time nor resources for tagging such items, which had already half-filled a large cardboa...