The Great Knife Debate

Square One is the mother organization behind a tiny housing movement that I will not pretend I know very much about, suffice it to say, the village I was in was a pilot “project” that has been and still is failing. None of their other villages are run the same, “Opportunity Village,” where my daughter and I ended up, had a different purpose to Square One, more on that as we progress. Today’s installment is about the Great Knife Debate of 2018. Really just being a pissing contest between two very stubborn men who lived at the village.
It’s all innocent enough, it would be weird if there were never any arguments when you have such a strange collection of people from so many different backgrounds. When they’re fighting about how armed they want permission to be however, that is of concern. Especially when one of them is a meth addict and the other is on daily, mass quantities of anti-psychotics and has been imprisoned for violence in past, more than once. Add to that the fact that this man is under the impression he doesn’t need to take his meds. It’s the making of a scary movie.
Meet “Mickey the Jailbird.” No one called Mickey that, fact is, no one really called him anything, most of the village was afraid of him. He was always talking about being in a motorcycle gang and running his mouth regaling us with stories of crimes and jail time. The guy had nine lives it seemed, of course, he wasn’t a good liar. I got enough of the truth to know that he had been in some dangerous situations and had indeed almost died. All of it was due to his own bad decisions and the fact that he just wasn’t a likeable guy, easy to anger and once there, uncontrollable and totally unpredictable. He always talked about his time in prison and about how he should have been there longer, he’s dangerous, he’s armed, he’s killed before, all that rot.
There was a brief period of time during which he had targeted me, it was a horrible time. I was sure that one night I would come in after work to my tiny hut which we lovingly called, “The Grotto,” my daughter would still be at work. I would step into the darkness and he would be there, knife in hand and he would plunge it in to my chest and kill me. My ghost would stand there watching as he continued to stab me long after death, he’d have to pull the knife out of the plywood floor which would be riddled with cut marks.
He’d be grinning maniacally as the blood spatter on the wall behind him formed a gruesome discount Jackson Pollock of red with a faint outline of a man holding a knife in his hand outlined on the primer grey background of the wall. Then finally, he’d just get tired and leave. He would make some really ignorant comment before leaving, evidence he’s still not the sharpest crayon in the box, he would think it was really, really smart and probably spit on my bloody corpse before walking out into the darkness of night. I imagine what it would be like for my daughter to come home to that.
Back to what transpired though, contrary to what you’ve read thus far, this is meant to be a comedic break, at least so much as there could be one in what we came to call “The Village of the Damned.” About a month into my stay, a couple moved into a unit in my little corner of the world. Their names were Jackie and Chad and they seemed nice at the onset. Jackie kept herself busy nesting and Chad was trying to get involved with some of the building projects going on, there’s always something that needs to be fixed. The village had the guys that like to fix things, the guys that don’t like to do anything at all other than watch the ones who fix things and criticize but refuse to help. And finally, there are the guys who like to break things. There was one who liked to poop on the floor in the laundry room too but that’s a different story.
Usually a new guy means that all the ones who have their niche don’t want the balance upset. As the number one scary man in the village, Mickey made a point of trying to intimidate every new man who moved in. What he noticed about Chad was that he carried a knife on his belt. It wasn’t a folding knife or utility tool, it was a fixed blade knife. Chad had spent time in the woods, he also worked varied jobs and thought of it as a utility knife, he’d been carrying it for years. At any rate, since Mickey had been told he couldn’t carry his belt knife, his knickers got in a twist about it.
At Opportunity Village complaints are never handled the same way twice and they’re never handled fairly. The process started with the issue being raised in village meetings. By this point I had stopped going to the village meetings on principle. They were a senseless waste of time and energy with more drama than duty. My heart, my sense of logic and my unfailing ability to see common sense just couldn’t take it.
What I did find out was that the argument went on over the course of three meetings, that’s three weeks, during that time both men wore their knives. Since it was on everyone’s mind all the other knife carriers there were comparing what they carried as well. People who just have a nice little folding pocket knives, I have a nice little Zero Tolerance quick release folding blade I’m fond of, my daughter carries a Gerber. The difference was that they carried big, fixed blades on their belts. I’m sure Mickey was pleased with the fact that his knife was bigger than Chad’s.
After the third meeting, they’d come to a decision, neither men could carry their knives. Of course that only lasted for about an hour after the meeting let out but it was interesting. As a person who hadn’t been to a single meeting about the issue two things stood out to me. The first was that if I had attended that first meeting the other two probably wouldn’t have been necessary. There was something else though, something I had been making note of already, a pattern. It was just about to happen again.
I couldn’t resist the urge to be outside so I wouldn’t miss it. I went out to wait for just the right moment. The same thing had happened after the other two meetings, people were hungry and I sat there at the table under the cherry tree watching as all those women were getting ready to make dinner, gathering up their things to head to the kitchen. All of them, at one point or another, carting back and forth with them, long, unsheathed, sharp kitchen knives.
It’s all innocent enough, it would be weird if there were never any arguments when you have such a strange collection of people from so many different backgrounds. When they’re fighting about how armed they want permission to be however, that is of concern. Especially when one of them is a meth addict and the other is on daily, mass quantities of anti-psychotics and has been imprisoned for violence in past, more than once. Add to that the fact that this man is under the impression he doesn’t need to take his meds. It’s the making of a scary movie.
Meet “Mickey the Jailbird.” No one called Mickey that, fact is, no one really called him anything, most of the village was afraid of him. He was always talking about being in a motorcycle gang and running his mouth regaling us with stories of crimes and jail time. The guy had nine lives it seemed, of course, he wasn’t a good liar. I got enough of the truth to know that he had been in some dangerous situations and had indeed almost died. All of it was due to his own bad decisions and the fact that he just wasn’t a likeable guy, easy to anger and once there, uncontrollable and totally unpredictable. He always talked about his time in prison and about how he should have been there longer, he’s dangerous, he’s armed, he’s killed before, all that rot.
There was a brief period of time during which he had targeted me, it was a horrible time. I was sure that one night I would come in after work to my tiny hut which we lovingly called, “The Grotto,” my daughter would still be at work. I would step into the darkness and he would be there, knife in hand and he would plunge it in to my chest and kill me. My ghost would stand there watching as he continued to stab me long after death, he’d have to pull the knife out of the plywood floor which would be riddled with cut marks.
He’d be grinning maniacally as the blood spatter on the wall behind him formed a gruesome discount Jackson Pollock of red with a faint outline of a man holding a knife in his hand outlined on the primer grey background of the wall. Then finally, he’d just get tired and leave. He would make some really ignorant comment before leaving, evidence he’s still not the sharpest crayon in the box, he would think it was really, really smart and probably spit on my bloody corpse before walking out into the darkness of night. I imagine what it would be like for my daughter to come home to that.
Back to what transpired though, contrary to what you’ve read thus far, this is meant to be a comedic break, at least so much as there could be one in what we came to call “The Village of the Damned.” About a month into my stay, a couple moved into a unit in my little corner of the world. Their names were Jackie and Chad and they seemed nice at the onset. Jackie kept herself busy nesting and Chad was trying to get involved with some of the building projects going on, there’s always something that needs to be fixed. The village had the guys that like to fix things, the guys that don’t like to do anything at all other than watch the ones who fix things and criticize but refuse to help. And finally, there are the guys who like to break things. There was one who liked to poop on the floor in the laundry room too but that’s a different story.
Usually a new guy means that all the ones who have their niche don’t want the balance upset. As the number one scary man in the village, Mickey made a point of trying to intimidate every new man who moved in. What he noticed about Chad was that he carried a knife on his belt. It wasn’t a folding knife or utility tool, it was a fixed blade knife. Chad had spent time in the woods, he also worked varied jobs and thought of it as a utility knife, he’d been carrying it for years. At any rate, since Mickey had been told he couldn’t carry his belt knife, his knickers got in a twist about it.
At Opportunity Village complaints are never handled the same way twice and they’re never handled fairly. The process started with the issue being raised in village meetings. By this point I had stopped going to the village meetings on principle. They were a senseless waste of time and energy with more drama than duty. My heart, my sense of logic and my unfailing ability to see common sense just couldn’t take it.
What I did find out was that the argument went on over the course of three meetings, that’s three weeks, during that time both men wore their knives. Since it was on everyone’s mind all the other knife carriers there were comparing what they carried as well. People who just have a nice little folding pocket knives, I have a nice little Zero Tolerance quick release folding blade I’m fond of, my daughter carries a Gerber. The difference was that they carried big, fixed blades on their belts. I’m sure Mickey was pleased with the fact that his knife was bigger than Chad’s.
After the third meeting, they’d come to a decision, neither men could carry their knives. Of course that only lasted for about an hour after the meeting let out but it was interesting. As a person who hadn’t been to a single meeting about the issue two things stood out to me. The first was that if I had attended that first meeting the other two probably wouldn’t have been necessary. There was something else though, something I had been making note of already, a pattern. It was just about to happen again.
I couldn’t resist the urge to be outside so I wouldn’t miss it. I went out to wait for just the right moment. The same thing had happened after the other two meetings, people were hungry and I sat there at the table under the cherry tree watching as all those women were getting ready to make dinner, gathering up their things to head to the kitchen. All of them, at one point or another, carting back and forth with them, long, unsheathed, sharp kitchen knives.