Knives were like bicycles with me.
I despised what was normally available. Ten-speed bikes were designed to jack one's butt up into the air and keep one's head down. The tires were too skinny for anything but asphalt. Then came mountain bikes and my life changed.
So it was with knives. People kept giving me slipjoint knives. They felt crummy in the hand, could bite, then stick into wood, causing the blades to close. When I was a teenager, I cut myself bad when my knife caught in some branch I was cutting and snapped shut while I was trying to extract it.
Never carried knives much as an adult until I bought a cheap Chinese locking knife in a dollar store. The 3-inch blade was perfect and I liked the fact that it locked. My second knife was a Winchester wood and aluminum folder that I quickly outgrew, then I got into Cold Steel, CRKT and eventually Spyderco, Benchmade, Buck and Kershaw. Since then, many of my favorite knives are made by Cold Steel. The 5-inch Gunsite is my flagship of folders.
It's the one I carry most.