Do you have a knife?

...in every pen/pencil jar in your house?

Mostly. Probably. Yes. They aren't the good knives, mind you.

But this is on your son's side of the bed.

Um, this is "the country?"

I hate it when people say that to defend their lifestyle.

Personally, I don't need it to excuse or validate my lifestyle. It is convenient, though. In the city, for example, knife weilding isn't as easy to excuse unless you're a professional zip tie remover or cable puller or carpet layer or some such thing.

**silence**

Oh. So have you killed anything with a knife before?

Yes.

Have you killed a person with a knife before?

Oh, good grief no!

What have you killed with a knife? What was the last thing you killed with a knife?

A pig.

Like a cute little pink piggie?!

No, like an ugly, black-and-brown, stinky, covered with red mud, charging potbellied pig.

No way!

It's a long story.

A potbellied pig is like a pet. You killed someone's pet!

Well, this pet liked to hang around with wild boar. It wasn't like attrition was aiming for him. Well he was, but just not...

You shot him.

attrition did, yes, and then I knifed him. The two shots in the head didn't kill him.

**silence**

And then we ate ribs and sausage.

Next time I'm stopping at "this is the country." It's sort of like a do not enter sign for the macabre or demented.

Scat
(this was a conversation I had with a friend last year who came over for tea and was walking around looking at my new laminate flooring and spied a knife or three)