In this monologue, Dave recounts a childhood camping trip at Yosemite where, at age eight, he coveted a medium‑sized Swiss Army knife. After persuading his father, he receives a lesson on knife safety—cut away from yourself, keep the blade out front, and never pull it toward you. While whittling a stick, Dave becomes absorbed in the task, fails to notice the stick moving toward his leg, and suffers a deep cut that requires seven stitches and leaves a lasting scar. Reflecting on the incident, he emphasizes that even when you follow rules, you must stay alert and think for yourself. The piece ends with a rhetorical prompt, “Where do you stand?”
Chapters
This is Dave on the Edge. When I was a little boy, our family went camping for a week or two every summer. And when we would go camping, there were so many fun things to do. One time we went into the camp store. This was at Yosemite, and they've got a camp store and a camp hospital and a camp everything. And there's so many tourists and visitors, and so we went into the camp store and there was this whole cabinet full of knives. Little knives, big knives, hunting knives, fishing knives, and there was a few Swiss Army knives. You know, the red ones with all the blades that come out? I wanted one of the medium-sized Swiss Army knives so bad, and I was trying to convince my dad. I was about 8 years old, and he said, "Oh, I don't know if you're old enough to handle a knife properly." I tried everything to convince him, and finally he said, "Okay, I'll get it for you, but I'm going to teach you how to use it, and you have to promise me that you'll only use it the way that I teach you." I said, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do exactly what you say." So we got back to the campsite. He sat me down in a chair. He put a stick in my hand, and he said— and he showed me first— he said, "Always cut away from yourself." Cut away from yourself, cut away from yourself, never pull the knife towards you, and always keep it out in front of you, never pull it in close. And I said, okay, okay, I'll do that. And so I was, I was cutting away from myself and keeping it, and I was whittling this stick down to make something, I don't know. And as I was doing it, I was getting so into it that I didn't realize the stick was getting closer and closer to my leg, and I was wearing a pair of shorts, until I felt the tip of the knife just have some resistance against it as I went, foom. I looked down and I had a gash about that long in my leg. I said, "Aww, Dad!" He said from inside the caravan, "You've cut yourself, haven't ya?" I said, "Yeah." He came out and he looked, took me to the camp hospital and they stitched me up. I got 7 stitches on my leg. I've still got a scar there to prove it. I learned a valuable lesson. I'd followed all the instructions that he gave me, but I hadn't paid close enough attention. And I learned that sometimes even when we're following the rules, we still need to think for ourselves and be careful. This has been Dave on the Edge. Where do you stand?
