The other day, as I was leafing through an issue of Blade magazine, I came upon a sentiment that seemed so true, so right, so apt, so just, that I formed an immediate bond with the author, whose article and name I have now misplaced, apparently forever. I've searched high and low. The idea is that we humans are distinguished from animals by our use of tools; that among our first tools is the knife, initially fashioned from stone or shells; and that he, writing for Blade magazine, never feels more fully human than when he is carrying a knife. Or maybe that he feels less than human when not in possession of a knife. Whatever. Either way, I couldn't agree more.

And so it came as a rude surprise when two and a half years ago I was arrested at the Baltimore/Washington International airport simply for being human—that is, for carrying a knife in my laptop bag. It was one of those relatively benign periods when the party in power feels less need to drum up a sense of terror. And my knife was neither a sword nor a machete nor a Thai kwan. The Web site from which I ordered it said it was a "huge folding fruit knife, perfect for cutting melons"—made by Linder in Solingen, Germany, with a beautifully polished pakka wood handle and a four-inch blade. Although Baltimore is not famous for melons, or for that matter, for food, I had gone for a lunch of crabs and crab cakes at one of the overrated restaurants specializing in that prized crustacean, and had brought along my large fruit knife to dissect a pile of crabs and pick out their sweet meat. My cell phone rang. My flight to Atlanta had been cancelled, but if I hurried to the airport, I might catch the earlier flight. I threw my things together and found a taxi. In the confusion, my melon knife ended up in my computer bag. Not in my large checked suitcase. I tend to travel heavy.

I had made this mistake only once before, a year earlier, at JFK airport, where the official had, somewhat apologetically, confiscated a smaller fruit knife. In Baltimore, confiscation is apparently considered too puny a punishment, the moral equivalent of amnesty. Moments after the X-ray machine discovered my melon knife, four towering members of the airport police surrounded me. The smallest of them handcuffed my wrists behind my back. They led me through the angry, sweating mob that had swarmed into the airport on that stormy afternoon. I felt their accusing stares like a thousand lashes. I was taken off to the airport jail where I was locked in a cell—for the first time in my life. By then, my baggage was well on its way to Atlanta. I asked to make a phone call. You've been watching too much television, was the officer's reply.

This is no time or place for the, quite frankly, mesmerizing details of my captivity. Long story short, after spending several hours alone in my cell (with brief breaks for mug shots and ten fingerprints), I was driven to the county seat and, after waiting several more hours, appeared before a magistrate (they call them county commissioners), who found probable cause for only one of the two crimes with which I was charged—possessing an unauthorized weapon in an airport. (This is a state crime. The feds were not interested in me.) Just after midnight, I signed a bond and was released on my own recognizance into the dank and trackless wastes of Anne Arundel County. I am free today only because I was able to scrape together the vertiginous fee of a top Baltimore lawyer.