"ROLLING ROLL OF DUCT TAPE: IT'S GOIN' PLACES "
by Shane Guy (with Teresa Zelkas)

I saw a roll of duct tape rolling west down Route 20 today. Route 20 goes coast-to-coast, so it was probably goin' places; it had places to see, people to be.

It was moving quickly and seemingly with a sense of purpose. In fact, I would have credited it with really knowing what it was doing on the whole, had it not been heading west in an eastbound lane, going the wrong way down a busy five-lane strip-mall road. As it was, I reckoned it knew where it was going but it was driving somewhat half-assed. It was only half of a rolling roll of duct tape anyway. Maybe two-thirds. No wonder it sucked at driving. It wasn't all there.

The real question was: Who in their right mind throws away duct tape? Much has been made, a popular cliché, of the multi-, nay, ultimate-usability of duct tape, and it's all true. You can do damn near anything with the stuff. It's good for everything except, ironically, ducts. But who cares if there's better tape for ducts? I once heard of a bold adventurer who tragically lost a thumb whilst on expedition, and he made himself a new one -- out of duct tape. Of course, I have no idea where I heard this, except that it was on a heavy party weekend back in college. So, you know: maybe I hallucinated it.

But it coulda happened. That's my point.

No one I know would throw out a roll of duct tape, which leads me to believe maybe it escaped by itself. "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock Holmes said that. This duct tape is perhaps more ingenious than any of us ever imagined.

Of course, sometimes duct tape gets a bad rap. I mentioned once to someone that I keep a roll in the trunk of my car, and they got a little creeped out. "Um, it isn't wrapped around the ankles and mouth and wrists of a body, is it?" she asked. Silly girl. I mean, duct tape doesn't restrain unwilling victims, people do. Just because a few kidnapers and Mafiosi and the occasional serial killer choose duct tape over something more crude (like paperclip chains, cheap handcuffs bought at an S&M boutique, brightly-colored giftwrap ribbon from a party store) shouldn't cast duct tape in a bad light. Duct tape is much maligned by its few oddball detractors, and ‘tain't fair. But even duct tape's enemies wouldn't toss a roll out a car window. They know how useful it is.

So it was just freaky. I saw this roughly cylindrical object rolling down Route 20 and I looked closer, expecting it to be something likely, maybe a can of Veg-All or maybe a bunch of Britney Spears CDs taped (maybe with duct tape!) into a cylindrical shape, or possibly an empty can some kid tossed out when he discovered it made a sucky telephone connected to another can with string (all kids do that once, and they're usually disappointed, 'cuz, ya know, this is the Cellphone Age); But, NO! --it was duct tape, the last thing on earth that would ever be forcefully ejected from a moving vehicle.

Fuckinay. What's the world coming to?

So I saw it rolling down the road and I slammed on my brakes and the guy behind me laid on the horn and I thought FUCK YOU, that was DUCT TAPE, man, didn't you see it?!

...and then it was gone. Just gone. Gone, before I could save it, before I could stop and pick it up.

Maybe it rolled down a sewer grate. Or maybe it really was goin’ places. Maybe normally, like most duct tape, it likes to stay put. But in its youth its Mom once held together the suitcase of a poor but passionate traveler, and thereby saw the world. And now, in her old age, she is stuck holding some guy's thumb on -- or she actually is the thumb... Whatever.

But the point is that she filled that little roll of duct tape’ s head with stories of all her past adventures, and somehow the whole idea just stuck – it has to roll! It has to move! Which is a kind of heresy for most of its kind, so it’s pretty much an outcast with the A-list "adhesive" set. Still, it has to stick with this crazy idea and see as much of the world as possible before it’s old and gummy and stuck in one place forever.

Deep down it’s very dependable, and some day it’ll make someone a great house tape. But right now every fiber in its being says it has to follow its wandering heart!

I don't know where it’s going, but I have a feeling, deep down in my gut, that it’ll get there. In a perfect world, a just world, all duct tape ends up where it should be. Like on the repaired soles of a poor young distance runner's shoes, or keeping an emergency pressure-release valve shut in a nuclear plant (it's "good enough for government work") ... Wherever it's needed, like a superhero.

So, Godspeed, little duct tape. Godspeed and God bless. Roll on, roll of duct tape! Good for shoe souls, and good for your soul.

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Shane writes on a desk that used to be an organ, in an old yellow house with lots of cats. No, really.
Teresa Zelkas is a writer and artist living in Greece, please visit her website here.

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