Let me explain. "EDC" stands for "Everyday Carry." Its the "stuff" you have with you all the time. In retrospect it might have been inevitable, once "prepping" for disaster or emergency became at least somewhat mainstream, that the folks who were looking at "making a plan, making a kit", what with "Get Home Bags", Bug Out Bags", and "Get Out Of Dodge" kits, would start evaluating the stuff they were carrying with them all the time and make a name for it, too. That, after all, is the source of the videos I posted a couple of weeks ago mocking the obsession some have with it, in "Don't be jealous of my EDC".
There have always been folks who were never satisfied with the pocket knife, pen, notebook, etc. that they carried with them on an everyday basis, always looking for a better solution. (There are also those of us who regularly break their pens, or lose the pocket knives...)
Some
Teddy Roosevelt carried a revolver. The night they each died, Abraham Lincoln carried a $5 Confederate note and nine newspaper clippings, while John Wilkes Booth carried a candle and pictures of five women, including his fiance. Why? Most people don't even think about it anymore. We simply put what we were carrying yesterday, and the day before that, back into our pockets. Do we really need everything we carry with us? In this hour we will take a look at the items we found in peoples' pockets all across America. Not cell phones, which everybody has, but more intimate items. Personal things...both valuable and cheap. Work aids...both simple and high-tech. Even food! And we'll not only see what they must have in their possession, but how some of it is made. Why does a search and rescue fireman carry a hockey puck? We'll also discover how they make and carry a "personal escape" bailout system.
A search for "edc" on Amazon returns 8,297 items. It doesn't take long in the list to confirm that most of them aren't "EDC" items, but...
Anyway. So what's the point? What started me thinking along these lines was when I ordered a new pocket knife via Amazon and realized it was a Columbia River Knife and Tools M16 EDC. (Amazon.com: Columbia River M16-10Z EDC 3-inch Folding Knife. In "Home Improvement". Yeah, right...) I couldn't help wonder how long it was going to take before someone started claiming that, like marketing departments have done with the word "tactical", "EDC" has "jumped the shark"?
They might, but that sure won't mean anyone's going to stop toting stuff around on a daily basis...
4 comments:
I have a solid EDC list that is probably excessive, but I am in the habit of carrying all of it everyday. I'll also R&D stuff, but that's usually only to post a review.
So now I have to ask: why does a search and rescue fireman carry a hockey puck? Inquiring minds want to know. . . :)
So he can have stand off while breaking windows in a burning house.
I think my EDC bag may be excessive, too, but it' stuff I was carrying anyway; I just started organizing it differently AGAIN, and I've just started calling it that. It'd still the same collection of "stuff".
I began writing this intending to say that calling the stuff you have with you all the time "Everyday Carry" and making something of a fetish of it was a symptom of a fascination with form and process over results, but when I started thinking about how often I change something out, I decided that was inaccurate.
Although it still seems a little funny...
What's the meaing of EDC?
"Everyday Carry." Basically, it's the stuff you have with you... every day. Some find it helpful to distinguish these items from those they have for special purposes. ("This is my EDC bag, that's my Bugout Bag." The EDC knife might be a Swiss Army Camper, say, while the BOB has a Leatherman MUT and a RAT7. And a tomahawk. And a Spetznaz shovel...)
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