GRAVITY IS GOOD, BUT DUCT TAPE IS BETTER

I write in praise of duct tape.
Yes, duct tape. Not duck tape, although there’s a brand by that name, and certainly you wouldn’t be the first to get that right-wrong. And to be clear, duck tape made from and for actual ducks would be useless unless you knew a lot more about ducks than you currently do.
All that aside, it’s true that duct tape is one of life’s essentials, the core of a decent fix-it kit. If it moves and shouldn’t, use duct tape. If it doesn’t move and should, use WD40… So the maxim goes.
Good, practical advice. Add a decent hammer, like an Estwing, and you’ve got yourself the beginnings of a great repair slash tool collection. It’ll also keep those ducks in line.
Once you have discovered the stuff, its all-purpose-all-the-time sticky goodness, you’ll always want to have a roll close at hand. Well, maybe not in a pocket or purse: it bulges and the police are likely to assume you’re planning a kidnapping.
But a drawer, that one right under the knives and forks, is ideal. See? We’re already together on this. 
Check your options – there is a duct tape made for actual ducts, for instance – and buy the expensive brand. You’ll thank me for it.
The story goes that duct tape was the idea of a Vesta Stoudt, a WWll ordnance factory worker and mother of two sailors, who suggested sealing ammunition boxes with a fabric tape that she’d tested herself. 
I’ve read where people now claim it has 1001 uses.  It’s certainly true that life is full of stuff that moves when it shouldn’t. Gravity’s good, but duct tape is better.
Want to prevent your clothes from gaping? Duct tape.
Summer flies driving you bananas? Ditto.
The lint filter not doing the whole job? Ditto. Ditto.
Need a temporary fix for that car radiator hose, loose exhaust, body panel or window? All of them, simultaneously? You got it.
It was duct tape that saved the astronauts on Apollo 13 and every spacecraft now carries a couple of rolls. Last year, a tiny hole in the International Space Station was patched with the stuff.
In fictional life, too. There was a major moment in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, when Blomquist saves Salander’s life by binding her head wounds with duct tape until the paramedics arrived. 
Around the only-slightly-less-fictional Kerr house, duct tape keeps things together in a  multiplicity of ways. It secures a plastic greenhouse that is threatening to disintegrate after successive batterings by westerlies.
There are bits of an otherwise indestructible Toyota truck in my driveway that are bonded by duct tape.
My lawnmower would have shaken itself into shattered, scattered shards of Chinese steel were it not for quantities of the stuff. The handle alone took a roll.   
Innumerable cardboard boxes of ephemera from my years on this planet are held together with duct tape. They are in a shed that itself ….  You get the idea.
Duct tape has been with me for the big moments in life. Sticky moments, you might call them.
It was there for those get-the-kid’s-lunch-together-in-the-seconds-before-the-bus-comes moments.  In one hand was a burrito, left over from last night’s dinner.  In the other was a pair of paper plates, left over from last night’s dinner.
But how to fold and seal the paper plates around the burrito so as to ensure its deliciousness (if not its heat) would hold up until noon, or whenever it is that schoolkids eat lunch?  Surely one of life’s core questions, and yet inexplicably unanswered on MasterChef.
The answer, of course, was in that drawer below the knives and forks. The top plate inverted to form a flying saucer shape (extra Parent Points for that) and the burrito safely tucked inside. Then, the edges deftly closed with a quality duct tape.
Lunch is assigned, sealed and (frisbee-flick here!) delivered. Yes, dad has saved the day again.
And then there was my proudest moment, arriving not long after I became a grandfather.
The curly-headed one was without a nappy – a diaper if you prefer – late on a Sunday.  Nobody wanted to make the long trek down the hill to find out if any place was open. 
A thorough search eventually located a similar item, except built for a much larger person.  A circus canvas when we needed a pup tent.
How to ..?  Don’t jump ahead of me here.
Yes, there were multiple folds, tucks and rolls. But the final product was a work of art, the silver-grey tape contrasting cleverly with the padded white panty, altogether a neat fit on a beautiful baby butt. And to top it off, I encircled her waist and chubby little legs with a 50 mm strip of duct tape.
Nothing could provide a stronger, more leak-proof bond between underpant and flawless skin. Perfection.
Should have taken a photo, something to bring out when teenage hood arrives.  Oh, well.
But you’ll be pleased to know the last of the duct tape sticky stuff should detach itself from that derriere any week now.