I have three short stories to tell you regarding duct tape. I promise you each story is more extreme than the first.
Since the Patriots weren’t playing Sunday, Mona thought it would be a good idea if I fixed some items around the house. We started in the basement (we also ended there) and we noticed that the hose to the washing machine had a small hole. No problem, I’ll go to the store and buy a new hose. Mona thought that would be a waste of money. Why not use duct tape? And so we used duct tape. We noticed a small leak near the hot water heater. No problem, she said. Duct tape will fix it. Within a few hours, anything in the basement that had any moving parts (no, not including me) had duct tape on it.
Second story, is about a Boston landlord who is obessed with duct tape. A crack in the front door to a retail space? No problem. Use duct tape to fix it. A leaky hot water pipe under the sink? Don’t call a plumber. Use duct tape to repair it. A window blind down? With a little duct tape and some fancy cutting, a few minutes later this Boston real estate guy had the blind back up due to the magic of duct tape.
But here’s the best story on the uses of duct tape. During a private “fly-in” fishing excursion into the Alaskan wilderness, a charted pilot and a few fisherman left a cooler of beer and food in the plane while they went fishing. A wild bear discovered it, and this is what he did to the plane to get the food:
The pilot used his radio and had another pilot bring him 2 new tires, 3 cases of duct tape, and a supply of sheet plastic. They used to duct tape to patch the plane and
flew home.
Tomorrow, I’m taking the Acela Amtrack train to Connecticut to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. I’ll pack by best shirt and pants. I’ll also bring some duct tape. As Mona would say: Duct tape. “Never leave home without it.”
