A Knife "Crisis"

There are some oddities about our life that are simultaneously strange, funny, and illustrative. If I paint for you the picture of the moment, then you will get a clearer picture of how we are together, and you will most likely laugh at the absurdity of our antics, but you may also get a sense of how we interact when we are deeply in touch with one another as Master and slave and as lovers...

Master is a collector of knives. Now, if you are picturing a handful of pocket knives or some similar image, you are way off the mark. Think hundreds of sharp, pointy objects ranging from the tiniest little pocket knife all the way up through swords and daggers of all types and descriptions -- not to mention a few hatchets and hawks thrown in just for the heck of it. He collects them, he studies them, he relates to them, he caresses and fondles and scratches with them. He knows every one of them intimately and is obsessive about the things. Seldom is He without four or five or six or more of them on His person. They adorn our walls, fill baskets, bins and drawers around our home, and are simply a pervasive part of our world.

On any given day, He is likely to be "hooked" on one or more of His treasures. In that mode, the knife in question becomes even more special than it would otherwise be. He carries it with Him everywhere and becomes very wrapped up in the sensuous nature and weight and feel of HIS KNIFE. T and I have come to find this knife fetish pretty much the normal way of things and we pretty much just work around it. So what's the big deal that there are knives at the dinner table and knives in the bed and knives in the car and ... Well you get the picture.

It only gets dicey when the current "knife du jour" goes missing. Because, of course, if you have an ADHD person carrying around half a dozen extranous objects through a busy and demanding schedule (and messing with such objects at every possible opportunity) there is no way that they are not going to get mislaid every now and then. He leaves them everywhere -- in every pocket, on every flat surface, in the bed clothes, under the bed, in the bath room, in the kitchen, in the car, at the office, ... Arrrghhhhh!

Well, last night was one of those "work all day, tear home, fly around like a lunatic and get gussied up to look like a girl (complete with hose and foundation garments), attend another awards banquet until "dark thirty," drag home and take care of the cat-coffee pot-CPAP-bed turn down-lunch pails, and consider the possibility of finally collapsing in the snuggy warm jammies and slippers...

BUT THEN DISASTER STRUCK: A Knife Crisis!!! The current knife darling, a bone handled, Scottish, kilt knife, turned up missing -- at 10:30 P.M.

I've learned enough by now to know that, however I might feel about a missing knife at 10:30 at night, for Master this is a serious thing. It will not do to brush this off. It is not going to work to say, "we'll look for it in the morning." It is not going to cut it to suggest that the errant piece of weaponry will surely "turn up." A missing knife is, until it is found, a pure, unadulterated, bona fide, crisis. Too, there is nothing that will create a Master/slave battle faster than for me to show the least bit of "attitude" in the face of His angst over the unexplained absence of a knife. His loss is a loss to be shared and fully experienced lest one wants to raise Masterly anxiety to Masterly ire...

So, last night, in my silly snuggy jammies and slippers, and in my very sweetest, most concerned, calmest manner, I began the hunt for the missing knife: I looked in the pockets of all His coats and all His pants and all His suit coats. I looked in the kitchen and the bathrooms. I checked the pantry and the refrigerator and the freezer (don't laugh!). I looked around the computer and on the dining table and under the bed and through all the bed clothes. I went through all the knife baskets and through His dresser drawers. He went twice out to the car we'd driven to the awards banquet, but had no luck. We've often joked that wives can find missing items because we simply hone in on them with "uterine" radar, but I didn't seem to have any radar without the uterus... I could see He was getting frantic, and I was running out of ideas. Finally, in desperation, I took the flashlight and the car keys and made one last trip out to the car, in my jammies and slippers, in the rain. I looked under the driver's seat, in the back seats, and under the passenger seat. Then, just as I was about to give up, I spotted the tip of the scabbard sticking out from between the passenger seat and the front console. There it was!!! The wayward knife!!! Slid down between the passenger seat and the console and all but invisible in the dark.

I nearly danced a jig on the dark, wet, rainy driveway as I snatched it up and scurried back indoors. I knew He'd be thrilled and relieved, not to see me (bedraggled and wet), but to have His beloved knife back. Sometimes, it is in the oddest things that we serve. Sometimes it is in the silliest things that a slave takes joy...

swan