Duct Tape and Cover

As Gilda Radner’s alter ego Emily Latella would say, “What’s all this about duck tape?” I say, exactly. (When did feathers become an adhesive?) As you’ve no doubt heard, the best way for us to get out of a sticky terrorist situation is with duck tape. It might sound daffy but the suggestion wasn’t from any quack. It came from the head of the Department of Home Depot land Security who told us all to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal ourselves against a biological or chemical attack. And we all ran to the store like lemmings for rolls and rolls.

For those of you consumed by the pressing controversy: it is in fact called both, Duck tape and Duct tape. To be historically accurate you can call it duck tape. The GI’s did during World War Two. That’s when they were flocking to the storeroom for a newly invented tape that kept moisture out of ammunition cases. Because it was waterproof it was nicknamed “duck tape.” After the war, the use of duck tape spread to the housing industry and was mostly used to connect heating and air conditioning ducts. Thus, it’s new name, duct tape. And duct/duck tape is no fly by night product. It was important enough that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory spent two years studying its effectiveness as a sealant. According to the final report back in 1998 duct tape “failed reliably and often catastrophically.” GAD ZOOKS! The author of the study later admitted liking the overly dramatic sound of a catastrophic failure rather than the more mundane, ‘the tape fell off.’ Sounds about as effective as my elementary school exercise of ‘duck-and-cover’ in case of nuclear annihilation. As if my 2nd grade boogey-covered school desk was going protect me from the ravages of radiation.

But the bonding power of duct tape sealed its fate despite its scientific shortcomings. Duct tape is as essential to a household as aspirin or light bulbs. Thousands of uses. Necessary as a fiancé is to Jennifer Lopez, or argument is to Bill O’Reilly or a smothering tomato sauce is to any main course I’ve ever made. Other known uses include ripping out warts, flattening stomachs, pushing up cleavage, patching hoses, binding bumpers to jalopies and in the case of my mother fastening the seams of a second hand fur coat. I still find the delicious dichotomy of a roll of industrial tape securing a pricey pelt - a coat worth fighting PETA over.

I know it’s the patriotic thing to stockpile duct tape and plastic sheeting so I can hermetically shut myself into my house. I know I should be taking this all seriously. Getting my food, water and battery operated radio together. Now finally a reason to thank my painter for painting my bathroom window permanently shut. My bathroom will be my hideaway. To be realistic I’ve even stashed a few Snickers Bars behind my moustache bleach and a couple of trashy novels. But, I don’t think the main reason for all this over the top readiness and need for duct tape is to prepare us for these troubled and uncertain times of Code Orange. Rather, I think we should be thanking the makers of duct tape for its best use yet: comic relief. And I’d take a thousand rolls of that.

by Stephanie Becker, Mass Distractions columnist for BestStuff.com