By Staff
Leada DeVaney, Hartselle Enquirer
There was an interesting column in a Birmingham daily paper recently. The writer rather cleverly advised all those who feared a chemical or biological attack to "duct and cover."
That's pretty clever. I wish I had thought of it.
It seems the best advice our government is giving us to avoid contamination is to cover all the cracks in our doors and windows with duct tape. As a result of this stellar advice, stores throughout the country are selling out of duct tape.
It seems manufacturing duct tape is the most lucrative business since creating reality television shows. Our future millionaires are going to be referred to as "tape-savvy entrepreneurs."
After watching all the duct tape hoopla, I went around my house and looked for some. Surely, in all my years of living I had acquired at least one roll of duct tape. I looked and looked.
Apparently, I was duct-less.
I did find a couple of rolls of regular tape and some leftover Christmas green plastic wrap.
"Maybe I should just tape the plastic wrap to the windows with the tape," I said. "This would give me some protection, wouldn't it?"
I started in the dining room, tackling the small back window. It sure does take a lot of plastic wrap to cover a window and quickly, I ran out.
"Maybe aluminum foil will work, too," I said.
By this point, I had ran out of cellophane tape, too. I fished out some masking tape from the back of the utility drawer.
I completed the back window with aluminum foil and beige masking tape.
There, I was safe – at least if a bomb fell in my backyard.
Now on to the front of the house.
Since aluminum foil is awfully expensive and I had run out of it, too, I used wrapping paper left over from my dad's birthday. The masking tape lasted for a while, but soon it was gone also.
I resorted to thumb tacks to finish off the front of the house. Finishing nails and blankets replaced the tacks and birthday paper for the back bedrooms.
At last, I was done. The house was safe. I would sleep easy that night.
The next morning, I woke up, assured that my safety measures were successful and all was right with the world.
When I peeked behind the blanket in front of my bedroom window, I noticed cars slowing down in from of my house.
"Obviously admiring my safety measures," I said.
Soon, my neighbors gathered on my front lawn.
"Probably want to know if I will let them in in case we're attacked," I thought.
Sure I will. The price of admission is one roll of duct tape.