Okay, I’ve told this story a number of times now and every time I tell it, someone says with tears of laughter in their eyes, “You have to write that down one day.” Well, the proverbial “one day” is here…so I’m writing it down. I hope you enjoy my Daddy’s duct tape story.
Sorry, Tina, for blogging so quickly after yours, but I’ve been bad for a while now, the story’s ready, my day to blog finally came, and I’ve got lots of packing to do. So PLEEEEZE everyone, when you get to the end of this story, read on and enjoy the fabulous teenage chatter Tina picked up at the movies last night…it’s great!
This is a story about my dad, a one-of-a-kind man who left this world a little poorer when he passed back in November of 2004. Now, don’t get me wrong. My dad was NOT a rich man and he didn’t take it with him. He was a second-generation dairy farmer all of his life who sold his dairy for a song when he and my mother split up right about the time I turned seventeen. He worked for a number of years in the auto mechanic industry after selling the dairy and then retired to a mobile home in the desert. Being what the federal government refers to as a “notch baby”, a euphemism for “fell through the cracks”, he pinched pennies and made-do enough to somehow manage to live on less than $700 a month in social security income for about twenty years. How did he manage to do that? I have no clue, but I do know baling wire and duct tape had a lot to do with it. Okay, I see you scrunching up your face…what does baling wire and duct tape have to do with living on less than $700 a month? Lots! It’s a cheap way to fix everything from…well, from shoes and mufflers to feet. Yeah, you read that right…feet. There are other uses too, which you will learn more about as this tale unfolds.
First, let me say that my dad was a character. He was a crusty old coot with a huge heart and a tight wallet. He wasn’t a real educated man, but he had common sense and knew how to pinch a penny until the damn thing bled. Unfortunately, he was never able to teach me the trick. But growing up with this man, I was often subjected to lectures about the versatility and usability of baling wire. You could build a fence with it, you could tie a gate shut, you could keep a tree from falling down or you could stand up a fallen tree and keep it in place, you could fix a dog’s chain (just an example…no angry letters, please), you could keep a calf from wandering with a couple of strands and some bright colored cloth strips, you could quiet the rattle coming from under the hood of your car, you could re-attach a cooler motor when the only bolt you had to fit the hole had vibrated loose and rolled away to God knows where, and you could even re-attach your muffler if it fell off the car. There was no limit to the number of things you could fix with baling wire.
Another one of dad’s favorite items was duct tape. And the rule of thumb was…if you could fix it with baling wire, you could probably fix it with duct tape. In all actuality, duct tape was generally the first option, since it seemed to have even more applications. In addition to many of the applications listed above for baling wire, there were lots more for duct tape. You could close an open wound, you could make a collar for your dog if his old one broke, you could fix the tear in the arm of the old leather couch and keep the stuffing from falling out, you could fix the hem of your pants (or dress), you could reattach the binding of a book, you could patch a hole in the tent or the camping tarp, you could keep folks from tripping over an extension cord, you could keep track of how tall each kid had grown without writing on the wall, you could fix a flopping shoe so that it was good for another fifty miles, and you could even get rid of warts. No way, you say? Yeah way! I thought dad was making that up, too, until I actually saw a TV special on it. Who knew?
I’m telling you, when it came to baling wire and duct tape, my dad was the expert. Through the years, he never ceased to surprise me with the new applications he could come up with. And in time, he actually came to pride himself on the different applications – it became a challenge. The bottom line was that it wasn’t broke until it couldn’t be fixed with baling wire or duct tape.
One of my most precious (and weird) memories was the day I took my dad to the doctor because he was complaining about pain in his feet. When I went to dad’s house to pick him up, he came out of the bedroom wearing shoes that had been mended with duct tape. Now, these were shoes that should have seen the inside of a dumpster about five years sooner…they were awful, ratty, broken, now silver shoes. I insisted that dad go back into the bedroom and change them. He rolled his eyes and huffed as he turned and grudgingly did what I asked. I should have known that wasn’t the end of it…dad was stubborn and had never backed down from a fight in his life. But I was in a hurry and distracted, so it never occurred to me to question why he had capitulated so easily.
So with me fat, dumb and happy, we headed off to the doctor where we were eventually ushered into the examining room. The doc came in and after the obligatory hellos and small talk, we got down to the business of the pain in dad’s feet and he was instructed to take his shoes off. As I prayed dad had worn clean socks, I closed my eyes and stifled a yawn caused by lack of sleep. With my eyes closed, I heard the doc ask, “what’s that?” My blood pressure instantly skyrocketed through the ceiling. Opening my watery eyes, all I could see was a blur of silver where my dad’s feet should have been. I blinked to clear my eyes and as they came into focus, I found dad sitting there grinning at the doctor like the proverbial Cheshire Cat with his feet sticking straight out in front of him on the examining table, wrapped in…you guessed it…duct tape. I stared at dad’s feet, trying desperately to come up with some explanation…any explanation…that would make this seem normal. Not gonna happen. I looked at the doctor and found him staring at me, clearly hoping I could explain. Nope.
I just smiled and shrugged as I told him, “I got nuthin’.”
The doc, apparently deciding we might both be mildly “challenged”, just reached for a drawer, pulled out a pair of scissors, and quietly began to cut the tape away from dad’s foot. When he’d cut through the tape and pulled it away, he found a huge wad of crumpled up duct tape adhered to the bottom of dad’s foot.
My fist thought was, “God, please let that not be the cause of the pain in his feet.”
But then recognition dawned just as the doctor asked, “Is that what I think it is?”
I nodded. “Yep. Homemade arch support.”
Holding it in the air like a dead rodent dangling by its tail, the doc nodded appreciatively and said to my father, “Good idea. Does it help?” Oh – My – God! He’s encouraging him!!!
Dad’s smile split his face from ear to ear and he nodded, proud as a peacock that the doctor now understood how smart and creative he truly was. I groaned, knowing this would only raise the bar. Dad would now be on a mission to find out just how many more applications he could find for that roll of duct tape in his barn. By next weekend, he’d have a case of it on order.
Well, you might think this is the end of the duct tape story, but you would be wrong…this was just the beginning. The bar had been raised and dad now had to find another application – one that could top the arch support story. And find it, he did.
Dad had been experiencing prostate problems and was scheduled for a treatment that entailed shooting something like microwaves into his penis in order to kill the cells that were narrowing the tube, thereby causing the offending flesh to die and sluff off. Sounds awful, but the doctor assured us it was a fairly simple procedure and much less painful than the alternative treatments. Although the procedure was a fairly simple one, it would require that dad go home with a catheter and return in about 5 days to have it removed. No problem. Dad was a grown-up and could certainly handle this without adult supervision. He agreed.
So when the day for the procedure came, I picked dad up early at his home, made sure there was no duct tape on his shoes, and headed off to the doctor’s office. The procedure went smoothly and there were no hitches. Later that evening, I returned my father to his home with his required catheter in place and the handy dandy little pouch taped to his leg. Life was good.
Later that evening, however, my sister called me, concerned about dad’s catheter. The conversation went something like this…
“Dad says his catheter is leaking.” My sister can be the queen of one-liners sometimes.
“What? Are you kidding me? Where’s it leaking?”
“I don’t know. He says there’s blood in his urine too. He offered to let me look and I declined.”
“Good choice.” I suspected the blood in the urine was normal, but the leaking catheter certainly couldn’t be. “Okay, I’ll call the doctor. You see if you can get him to tell you where the damn thing’s leaking and how bad.”
“Okay, but I’m not lookin’.” She never was the real maternal sort.
“Yeah, let’s save that as a last resort.”
“Not even. If there’s any lookin’ to be done, I’m not doin’ it. I’ll go get George The Barber and he can do it.”
I had to wonder why in the hell she thought Dad’s neighbor would be any more willing to look at it than she was, but I sensed now was not the time to ask. So I hung up and called the doctor while my sis set out to identify the extent and source of the leakage. The doctor confirmed my suspicions that the blood in the urine was nothing to worry about…perfectly normal. “But where is the catheter leaking at?”
Good question…unfortunately, I hadn’t really thought things through or I would’ve waited to find out before calling the doctor. “Uhm…I don’t know. Sorry. Want me to call you back?”
“No. There’s really only two places it can be leaking from. The first is where the cap goes on the bag. If it’s leaking from there, most likely the cap just isn’t on right. The only other place it could be leaking from is where the tube goes into the end of the penis. Sometimes there can be some slight leakage, but there’s really nothing we can do about it. He can just wrap some gauze or something around the site to absorb the drainage.”
Okay, that didn’t sound too bad. This should be an easy fix. I thanked the doctor and waited for my sister to call back. When she did call a few minutes later, I could tell by the sound of her voice that all was not as it should be.
“Did you talk to the doctor?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “I did. He says the blood is normal. As long as it’s not a lot of blood…like he’s hemorrhaging or something like that…don’t worry about it. It could last a couple of days. Did you find out where it’s leaking from?”
“Yes.”
That was all she said…just ‘yes’, followed by a deafening silence.
“Okay. So, where’s it leaking from? Where the cap goes on the bag?”
“No.”
Uh-oh.
“It’s leaking where the tube goes in.”
I took a deep breath before diving in. “Okay, the doctor said nothing could be done about that. Just tell dad to wrap some gauze or something around it. Maybe you could get him a Kotex or some pantiliners – something that would absorb the leakage.”
“He already fixed it.” Her voice was really strained and I could tell there was something she wasn’t telling me.
“Already fixed it? How?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
Oh man, this really wasn’t good, but I had to know. “What did he use to fix it?”
“Duct tape.”
“Duct tape? Are you kidding me? How did he fix it with duct tape?” When she didn’t respond, I groaned. “OhmiGod, you are NOT telling me he taped the catheter to his penis!”
“Yep.”
Neither of us spoke for a very long moment. Finally, I asked, “Doesn’t he know that’s gonna hurt like hell when he takes it off?”
“He told me to mind my own business. He said he’s not a big baby.”
“Wow. I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“Well, I guess it’s his penis and if he wants to put duct tape on it, he can.”
At this point, we realized how very funny the situation was and we both began to giggle hysterically until it occurred to me that maybe the tube should be allowed to drain. “You don’t suppose it’s going to hurt him having sealed it up, do you? I mean, if it’s not allowed to drain, is it going to build up bacteria in there?”
My sister’s response indicated that she had been pushed beyond the point of compassion. “I don’t know and I don’t care. If his dick falls off, I guess that’s his problem, isn’t it?”
And the uncontrollable giggles started all over again.
No, that’s not the end of the story…that would’ve been way too easy. Remember, dad was supposed to go back in five days to have the tube removed. This time, it was my sister’s job to drive him to the doctor. So the first thing she did was deliver a lecture about how he was to make sure all signs of the duct tape were removed before going to the doctor.
The story has it that Dad nodded his head and impatiently told her to stop being nosy. He would take care of it.
My sister, silly girl, took that to mean he would remove the tape beforehand. But this is one time when she mighta shoulda looked – just to be sure. She didn’t.
So she gets dad to the doctor and is in the waiting room leafing through a magazine when the nurse calls dad back. Dad waves her off and goes back alone. No problem…she didn’t really want to be in on this deal anyway. While she’s sitting there waiting, she notices the nurse come out and call the receptionist aside. They go to the back of the room, where sis can see them through the window. Nurse whispers in receptionist’s ear and they both collapse in convulsive laughter. Sis is suspicious.
Then the nurse and the receptionist both call another nurse over to the corner, where nurse one whispers in other nurse’s ear. Convulsive laughter again…and sis is starting to boil. By the time a third nurse is called into the corner, sis is ready to rip the armrests off the chair and beat Dad to death with them.
So…out comes dad a few minutes later, grinning from ear to ear. Sis catapults herself out of her chair and stomps to the car with Dad in tow. In the car, she turns to him and asks, “You didn’t take the duct tape off like I told you to, did you?”
He grins mischievously and replies, “No. I wanted the doctor to see how smart I was that I could fix it with duct tape.”
Sis stares at him for a moment before answering, “Oh, I’ll bet he thought you were one smart cookie, alright. In fact, I’ll just bet he never forgets just exactly how smart you are!”
My poor, sweet father just grinned even bigger, wallowing in her praise as she valiantly resisted the urge to choke him to the floorboard.
Well, there it is…another episode in the saga of my totally dysfunctional, totally colorful family. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. So hold on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!
Love ya.
Kayce
Share This
