The things they carried but didn't really need to

Long before Epictetus got a second act as the spirit animal of a character in Tom Wolfe's sprawling A Man In Full, the famous Stoic philosopher was the target of a domestic robbery, losing a cherished iron lamp. He noted, "I lost my lamp because the thief was better at keeping awake than I. But for that lamp, he paid the price of becoming a thief; for that lamp, he lost his virtue and became like a wild beast. This seemed to him a good bargain, and so let it be!"

Your humble author did not display anything like this sort of composure when a rogue TSA agent at JFK International Airport, under the pretext of examining my carry-on bag, surreptitiously relieved me of a $1,000 ballpoint pen. Made by Tactile Turn in Austin, Texas, it was milled from a twisted tube of damascus titanium, polished to a fare-thee-well, heat-treated to bring out a rainbow of iridescent colors not unreminiscent of an oil slick on asphalt, then painstakingly fitted with a titanium bolt-action mechanism to extend and retract the $2 Pilot G2 refill that does all the actual writing. I paid just under $1,000 for it, but it was worth more than that at the time of its disappearance. Tactile Turn made just 20 of them in July 2021, and I had serial 001.

HOW STRATEGIC LINGO SWALLOWED PROGRESSIVE THOUGHT

Neither my spouse nor my friends understood the thoroughly un-Stoic depths of my despair over this petty theft, so I was forced to repair to the one place where I would be assured of sympathy, namely the "everyday carry community" online, also known as EDC. A product of tech-worker culture around the turn of the century and glorified in "Slashdot" and other nerd/geek hangouts, the "EDC lifestyle" boasts nearly a half-million followers on Reddit and includes dozens of single-purpose websites. It supports entities as diverse as Idaho's Chris Reeve Knives and the Armstrong Metal Works, which supplies handmade coins made from rare metals and stamped with inscrutable designs. But what is it?

Committed "EDCers," particularly the ones who include handguns, combat knives, or tourniquets (really) in their "pocket dumps" of daily-carried items, will tell you that EDC is about being ready for whatever the world throws at you. Others deride it as fetish or just being nerdy. One media outlet suggested EDC is the lesser sibling of being a "prepper," clutching a few pearls over reports of people who carry not one, but two, handguns to the office as part of their "rig."

Perhaps the kindest and most thoughtful way to see EDC, however, is as an attempt on the part of white-collar, middle-class fellows to put a little caveman back into their daily lives. What separated us from the apes? The use of tools. What made men immortal in literature? The use of weapons. Hrunting. Zulfiqar. Excalibur. Killdeer. Enola Gay. The CGI heroism of today's Marvel Cinematic Universe may rely on magic powers, glowing beams generated via emotion, and alien physical traits, but the classics of yore made it plain: You can't be a hero if you aren't competent to wield some sort of tool, be it a sword, longbow, or blacksmith's hammer.

While guns and knives are cherished parts of some EDC setups, the average white-collar job no longer permits the carrying of so much as a miniature Swiss Army Knife on-premises. So the common EDC desire to have a weapon-adjacent item, for lack of a less loaded phrase, largely finds its expression through the increasingly arcane selection of exotic mini-prybars sold by companies such as Spokane Valley, Washington's Lynch Northwest.

The prybars of "LynchNW" are milled to micrometer perfection and feel alive in one's hand. Some of them have an eye and mouth, like a Flying Tigers P-40 viewed in profile, enhanced by unique engraving and colors. They have names like "In Without Knocking" meant to signify a use adjacent to, and tinted by the glamour of, heist films and reckless criminality. You’d be a fool to fly with one, but they’ll pass a metal detector and can be plausibly described to one's corporate security team as "bottle openers."

Not every EDC enthusiast is obsessed with milled titanium and MagnaCut steel. The "Flipper Zero" hacking tool is common in "pocket dump" photos on Reddit and elsewhere. The government-surplus site CountyComm sells a neat series of miniature grappling hooks that fold up into a silver cylinder to which a length of paracord is attached. "Use it as a specialized grappling hook to remotely capture lines, tear down phone lines, reposition barbed wire emplacements, disrupt wires, move packages and bags, rake and break windows, tear down blinds/curtains in SWAT entry applications," the site exhorts.

John Le Carré's lovely The Night Manager features a scene that might speak to the EDC obsession a bit. The protagonist is supposed to rescue the son of a drug dealer from a phony kidnapping and thus ingratiate himself with the villain in question. Although he knows that his fight will be largely staged, he still grabs a knife from the kitchen, remembering his military training. "Why the knife … He was glad he had the knife because a man with a weapon, any weapon, is twice the man he is without one: read the manual."

Surely the same is true for the modern-day knowledge worker or feckless member of what is now called "the laptop class," who still feels better if he can grasp some sort of tool. Something that feels serious in the hand that isn't made of playtoy plastic by the lowest bidder in some anonymous overseas factory. Beowulf would laugh at such a compensation — but Beowulf never had to occupy his hands during a four-hour corporate training session, did he?

Reflecting on his pilfered lamp, Epictetus noted, "A man only loses what he has. … Loss and sorrow are only possible with respect to things we own." Three months after my loss at the hands of the TSA, after I had spent unconscionable sums selecting an appropriate replacement for it, I found the twisted-titanium pen in the lining of my suitcase. There had been no theft, merely a shuffling-around in the course of inspection. I gave the pen a light wipe-down and placed it in a glass case where it would be safe. It turns out that even in the recherche world of EDC, some things are just too valuable to be carried on a daily basis.

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Jack Baruth was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Ohio. He is a pro-am race car driver and a former columnist for Road and Track and Hagerty magazines who writes the Avoidable Contact Forever newsletter.