Brother-in-law, though a frequent flyer, forgot to move his pocket knife from his carry-on to his checked bag. He groaned when TSA discovered it. The knife was a gift from us, a gorgeous little oval less than two inches long, but heavy and well-made. Bob and I found it on a trip to Germany, and bought one for ourselves, too. A Mammut MicroTool, it’s called.

B-I-L, the self-proclaimed Swedish Okie and country bumpkin, was on his way back to Sweden. When the TSA officer dangled the contraband with its dangerous half-inch blade, B-I-L recognized a glint of proud ownership in the eye of the new beholder. The officer beheld a prize. B-I-L is a sore loser.

B-I-L snatched the knife away, determined that it should not slip beneath the crumpled handkerchief in the warm pocket of the TSO. He could not bear the thought of his fine knife snug among the unmentionables, in pilled cotton intimacy under an overhanging gut. B-I-L intended to destroy the little tool.

He hadn’t counted on the strength of the precision German instrument. He ripped, he stomped, he tried to bend. It took him fifteen minutes to render the tool unusable, the stubborn vengeful bumpkin.

I know a man in Las Vegas who makes his living on the forgetfulness of travelers. He buys great lots of TSA’s confiscated pocket knives for pittance at auction, and sells them one by one on eBay. (The profit, they say, is in the “shipping and handling” fee.) He’s never seen a fine little tool like the exotic Mammut MicroTool. He must get an, um, filtered selection.

What we call “confiscated items,” TSA refers to as “voluntary abandoned property.” [sic] If I were a TSO, I’d protest the extra work involved in providing envelopes to passengers. I’d say it’s a bad idea. It would mean I’d have to hand over an envelope, wait for the passenger to address it, then collect a fat fee and provide a receipt. All that work! No more perks!