Living With a Titanium Grappling Hook for Emergency Survival Daily
It had been sitting on the corner of the kitchen counter for a few days, the kind of object you pick up, turn in your hand, set down again without deciding anything. Smaller than you’d expect, heavier than it looks. Folded in on itself it passes for something almost reasonable, like a dense keychain tool that got a little too ambitious. I slipped it into my bag one morning mostly because I didn’t want to keep looking at it on the counter.
For the first couple days it lived in the bag’s outer pocket, the one that already holds the things I don’t fully commit to. It made that pocket sag in a new way. Not dramatically, just enough that I’d notice when I grabbed the bag by the handle. There’s a particular kind of weight that doesn’t feel like weight so much as intention, like the object is asking to be accounted for.
At some point I moved it to a different pocket, then later to a jacket. That’s usually how something either finds a place or gets quietly retired. The hook part folds out with a bit of resistance, and that motion alone made it feel less like something that belongs in a pocket and more like something that belongs in a drawer. Still, I kept it around. Not because I had a clear use in mind, but because it felt like it might justify itself if I gave it enough time.
Most days it didn’t. It just shifted the balance of whatever I was carrying it in. In a jacket, it would pull one side slightly forward when I walked. In the bag, it created a lump that crowded out softer things. I found myself rearranging around it, tucking a notebook somewhere else, moving a charger to a different compartment. That kind of quiet negotiation is usually where I draw the line.
But then there are small moments that make you hesitate before taking something out. I used it once to pull a tote bag down from a high shelf in the garage without dragging a chair over. Another time to fish a dropped glove from behind a washing machine where my arm wouldn’t quite reach. Neither of those moments were dramatic or even memorable on their own, but they were just enough to make the object feel less theoretical.
Still, those moments are rare. Most of the time, I’m just carrying it past things that don’t need it. Walking from the car to the office, sitting through meetings, standing in line for coffee. It doesn’t help me open a package faster or find my keys or keep my day moving. It just sits there, a little too solid, a little too specific.
I took it out of my pocket one afternoon and set it on my desk, intending to leave it there. The desk is where a lot of these experiments end up. They linger for a week or two, then disappear into a drawer. But that afternoon I noticed the absence in a different way than I expected. Not relief exactly, but a slight sense that I’d removed something that was trying to earn its place.
That’s the part that kept it from being an easy decision. Some things you carry because they solve a problem you run into every day. Others you carry because they smooth out something small and repetitive. And then there are things like this, where the problem isn’t really present, but you can imagine the edges of it.
It’s back in the bag now, though not in a prime spot. More like a compromise. It doesn’t ride in my pocket anymore. I’m not that patient with it. But I haven’t fully let it go either. Every so often I’ll notice the extra weight when I pick up the bag, and for a second I consider taking it out again.
Then I don’t, and the day goes on as usual, with one slightly unnecessary thing along for the ride.