We have a tradition in my family, everybody gets started with the same knife. It's an unusual knife by Argentine standards, a traditional American knife very much like the Marble's ideal. It has a thin blade (compared to some modern knives) and a nice lion head in the pommel.
Kids in my family are taught basic safety by their father or grandad (both of them in my case), and then you get the lion head knife to carry around. After the knife has been beaten around for a while, and you've learned how to care for it, you get your very own first knife and the lion head knife goes into storage. Before it's passed on to the next generation, the last person to have used the lion head knife has to fix it.
My baby brother was the last one to use it, so it's in his room, until my son or his need it. He will then clean it up, fix any dents and put a fresh edge on it.
My dad taught me how to use a variety of edged tools, but the one I practiced with the most was his Boker scout knife. I don't remember exactly when, I must have been around 6 or 7, he took me to a Victorinox store to choose my first knife (I had been using others, but had none to call my own).
He bought me a camouflaged Camper or Huntsman. I carried that thing everywhere. I remember getting into trouble at school because kids and teachers where scared of the knife, my family has always had ties to Argentine traditional culture and country life, even though I was raised in a city because my parents were attending law school a knife has always been a basic dress item. For the life of me I couldn't understand how people could freak out about a small knife.
It was a sad day when I lost that knife. I was riding my horse through a little mountain pass, I reached for the knife and found the sheath empty. I spent two days going through every rock in that path, and I was terrified of telling my dad I'd lost the knife. Of course, in such a small village, everybody knows everybody, so some neighbour saw me looking for it, and the story reached my dad quickly. He didn't say anything to me, until I shamefully admitted the loss during dinner. He didn't seem pissed off, he explained that sometimes you have bad luck, and that the important thing was that I didn't loose the knife out of neglect or being reckless. When we returned to the city he took me to the Victorinox store again and bought me a SwissChamp with the survival kit and an Aitor fixed blade that I had seen in a hunting magazine. I was around 8 or 9, I still have those knives.
I still go back to that mountain village as often as possible, it's where my grandad moved to when he retired and it feels more like home than this crowded city where I'm forced to stay a few days a week. My grandad passed away a year ago, and I've started to get in touch with many of his friends, specially the ones that visited him at his mountain home. While I was having lunch with one of those old fellows, one whose house was near the trail were I lost my knife, he asked me "So, did you ever find that knife?". Sixteen years after I lost my knife people still remember, I guess I did make a big fuss about it.
I had to replace a pivot pin (it was broken when I found it) but it still walks and talks, and has great snap. Not bad, considering it was repaired by a six year old 
), first Old Timer (stolen from college dorm along with the SAK 
), first Schrade LB7, first Case stockman (stolen from football locker in high school 
