Confused: Knives

How long have you lived with a misconception picked up in your youth? I have a catalogue of them and they are still coming out. This partly because I was brought up to respect authority (no, really – but I am learning to overcome it) and because I tend to take things literally. Well, that is what language is for. English has many words for things that other languages see no reason to name. I have been brought up to value words and try to use appropriate words where possible. This can lead to a blind belief that other people use words with the same care - a dangerous belief as anyone who has ever read anything published by Microsoft will know.

 

In an attempt to coax more fallacious beliefs from my unconscious, I intend to share those of which I am aware with you. To find more, click on the ‘Confused’ topic/tag/category. Here is the first of what I am ashamed to say could be a long series which I hope may explain and/or excuse things which I have said and/or done in the past and which may have resulted in anything from mild misunderstandings to mega calamity and matrimonial strife. 

Knives

 

My gran, Meg, lived with us when I was young and was a fount of wisdom. I spent hours with her in the kitchen (her habitual domain) where I learned much as she scurried back and forth practising the twin arts of homecraft and confusing the young. 

One of the gems I gleaned from watching her wash up was that glasses go in first. The water is really hot and doesn’t have any grease or bits of cabbage in it. The glasses come out hot enough to dry themselves by evaporation. This means less work in the drying department and leaves them free from the smears which drying with a tea towel can sometimes produce. My gran loved a clean glass and had a great respect for economy.

She also laid down the law about washing knives. You do not wash knives in hot water. Being a bright lad I knew that knives were sharp, indeed for me this was their only significant characteristic. And this is why you do not play with them, hold them by the blades, put them in your mouth, run with them (especially on the stairs), nor do you hand them to anyone blade first. I had an internal argument with myself every time I was required to hand someone a knife as I tried to reconcile the instruction about not holding them by the blade while at the same time handing them over handle first.  I developed a technique of holding the blade between middle finger and thumb, right next to the handle, and with an elegant flick rotate the knife through 180 degrees so that the handle is facing away from me – but I digress.

My younger self associated Meg’s commandment to mean that hot water would make knives blunt. I could not see how this might be, but gran's word was law in the kitchen. As I grew older I saw others happily scrubbing away at blades in scalding water and despite there being no obvious deleterious effect on their cutting power, I silently thought 'you shouldn't do that...'.

I was wrong of course. I only found this out when I was much older. Gran had failed to mention the salient fact that the knife rule only applied to the bone and ivory handled knives, and which we had in abundance, because the heat melted the glue which held the handles on.

I still have a vague feeling of guilt every time I put a hand full of cutlery in the hot washing up water, but I am learning to live with it.