The Adventures of… Duck Tape

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The miracles of modern science and technology never cease to amaze me. I remember when cell phones were the size of small dogs, and now they not only easily slide into a tight pair of jeans, but talk to you while they are there. I’m always afraid it’s going to tell me my jeans are too tight, then pre-dial Weight Watchers as it web surfs for bigger jeans. And what about the internet? We used to have to use a book or ask a question back in the Stone Ages. Now, Google will tell me my own anniversary. Technology has come so far. Thirty years ago, we got mad when we had to hold the rabbit ears on our TV so we could get one of our three channels to only have lines across the screen instead of fuzz and lines. Now I get mad when I have to change batteries in the remote control or satellite problems cause the upper one hundred of my five hundred channels to go black. How can I survive with only four hundred channels?

In honor of technology today, I’m giving a shout out to the greatest invention of all, duct tape. Okay, perhaps I’m overstating things a bit, but if it’s not the greatest, at least it’s the most versatile. Let me give some examples.

Duct tape will hold the rabbit ears on your TV in place. You can use it to fix a broken headlight. Trust me, I’ve seen it done. In fact, I’ve seen it hold a door on a car and function quite nicely as a window for a 1978 station wagon. Truth be told, I’m pretty sure duct tape was the only thing keeping that car going. You can make a boat out of duct tape. (You know you have too many TV channels when you’ve seen this done, twice.) Once I even saw a guy make a wallet out of duct tape. In my mind, that makes him creative, cheap and a master of modern technology. I’m just glad he didn’t have the internet and a talking phone because I’m convinced if he combined those with enough duct tape, he could have ruled the world.

Duct tape is so versatile, one day I fully expect NASA to fix a space station with it. Perhaps I should start the Duct Tape Channel to illustrate all the uses for this amazing invention since this column clearly won’t have room. You don’t think five hundred and one channels will break my TV, do you? It doesn’t really matter. I think I know what I can use to fix it.