Solving The Duct Tape Mystery

Oh the wonders of duct tape or as we used to call it "racer's tape" as it would hold many a motorcycle together. If you have ever watched The Red Green Show on PBS you have witnessed the marvel of its application. My son has his own roll for taping his bicycle rims to prevent the spokes from poking the tube and I have a white colored roll for making quick repairs on my boat sails. Recently I started seeing empty duct tape rolls around the street where we live plus strips of used tape laying on the ground. They were up and down the street especially where the street makes a sharp curve around Cherry Park. Asking my dog where all the tape was coming from met with her usually reply "When is dinner?"

Then I asked my son, who has vast knowledge of video games and MySpace, and to my great surprise his normal reply of "I don't know" was replaced with an explanation: Kids are placing the duct tape sticky side up in the street so when a car runs over the tape the tire grabs the tape and the flapping tape makes a sound like a flat tire. Now who said our next generation doesn't have a great future?

I miss the Red Green Show after stopping the subscription to Direct TV. Now I no longer have to pay their monthly charges that allowed me to watch the same weight loss commercials on four hundred different channels. The monthly charge they were billing now matches the cost of filling up the gas tank on my Nissan which is good for around 330 miles but that cost is far less than the $200.00 required to fill up my neighbor's large SUV that he so proudly parks in his driveway.