t’s gotten to the point where I keep multiple varieties of custom packaging tape in my vehicle at all times. There have just been too many times when I’ve needed a quick fix, and it was the electrical tape that slipped under the driver’s seat, or the barricade tape left over from a Halloween prank, that came to the rescue. Like the one time I was dropping my daughter off for her first day of junior high, and one of her backpack straps broke clean off. Besides my consternation at the fact that a brand new backpack was kaput on day one, my daughter began to panic at how seventh grade was starting out.
You probably know what I’m going to say next. If it’s, “And then I whipped out some custom packaging tape…”, you would be correct. My cousin had given my son a bunch of half-used aisle marking tape from the last time he’d remarked the floors to his auto shop, and I had quickly confiscated the red roll for my custom packaging tape stash. It’s a good thing I took the red kind, too, because it matched perfectly with my daughter’s One-Direction backpack. For the one and only time I thanked God for all of those bright, pouting lips. I saw that years of listening to all of that crooning, and stumbling across too many awkward doodles, had led up to the purchase of this backpack so that I could use the red tape and become the coolest mom in the entire world.
A little bit here, a little bit there, and not only was her backpack fixed but she now had a custom striped design on her straps. As she walked into school with renewed vim and vigor, I overheard someone say to her, “Cool tape job. I should do that to mine…”. That’s right, world; you can’t touch this! That was a pretty amazing day. It was not so much an amazing day when I fell down some stairs and my shirt split down the side seam.
It wasn’t the most perfect thing, but if I wouldn’t have had some custom packaging tape at my disposal I would have been forced to expose myself to society, whereas I was able to mend the tear with some strips of adhesive enough to get me home fully clothed. And the thing that really sucks is that was my favorite shirt, too…