Duct
tape – “the handyman’s secret weapon” - NOT
by
Robert LaFrance
I’m an experienced reporter, right?
I’ve reported on hundreds of hockey games, right?
You wouldn’t know it from my report
of the November 23 game between the SVHS Lady Vikings and the Hartland Lady
Huskies. I re-invented the Huskies and all through my report I called them the
Woodstock High School Lady Thunder. I found this out on the day the paper came
out and a guy at the grocery store mentioned that Hartland had played.
“Woodstock, you mean?” I said. No, he said, Hartland.
I can only blame drugs and liquor; I
don’t use them, but perhaps it’s time I started.
***************************
On another subject, I first heard a
couple of years ago that the worst kind of tape anyone could use for taping
together duct work is duct tape. Since then I have asked several people who
should know – plumbers, furnace installers, people who watch the Red Green Show
– and they all agree that when you want to tape together ductwork you should
use practically any kind of tape except duct tape.
It makes one wonder about everything
else in life that we have taken for granted. As a cynical newspaper reporter
(believe me, that is as redundant as ‘hot water heater’) I can’t say I ever
believe anything, but I was sure that one thing I could count on in life was
the efficacy of duct tape. It appears that, once again, I have been betrayed.
Back in my youth, as I was growing
up in the 1960s, I was sure there were many things I could trust: (1)
Politicians had risen to where they were because they were smarter than I, (2)
Beautiful people like Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy
were very virtuous because they were so great looking, and there were so many
people watching them. It turned out that those three, and hundreds of rich and
famous like them, were on about the same moral plane as the average
streetwalker, and (3) If you’re a good
person and you try hard you will succeed and be respected and admired.
Looks as if I don’t limit my
mistakes to hockey.
*****************************
This might not be cheerful either,
but it lends itself to sarcasm quite nicely. I refer to the August police
shooting of a teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. Last evening I was watching
television and switched to CNN to see the St. Louis District Attorney making
the announcement of the Grand Jury’s decision not to charge the police officer.
I had predicted out loud – there is a witness – that there were not going to be
any charges; anyone could tell by the way he was wording it. Sure enough, no
charges against the officer, Darren Wilson.
A police officer trained in unarmed
combat and carrying gun, baton, mace, stun gun and nuclear weapons for all I
know facing one unarmed man even if he did weigh 290 pounds. Yes, I could see
the reasoning behind the Grand Jury’s decision that it was all right to shoot
the young man six times. It’s a good thing there weren’t more; the police would
have had to bring out grenades, tanks, and possibly fighter jets.
Of course I must remember that this
was in Missouri, a state in a country where people are not only allowed to own
guns, but URGED to do so. The gun freaks over there keep referring to their
Constitution, which speaks of ‘the right to bear arms’ but it’s ironic that all
this killing comes about because of one misspelled word.
The Founding Fathers, forced by
tradition to wear heavy coats all the time, inserted in their Constitution that
they should have ‘the right to bare arms’ and now you can see where that led.
There is another high-profile case
in Cleveland where a police officer shot a 12-year-old boy who was brandishing
a toy weapon. A lot of criticism there, but I think people should put
themselves in the place of the officer who had about a tenth of a second to
decide if that gun were real. I saw a picture of the gun on television; it
looked real enough to me, and a 12-year-old kid can kill you just as easily as
a 34-year-old unemployed labourer.
*****************************
Completely off the topic:
My friend Flug’s nephew Goren and
his wife Sheilaxe just returned from a south seas cruise - Saint John, NB to
Digby, NS. It was a rough crossing of the Bay of Fundy, but the captain,
wanting to stop people from being sick, laid out a snack in the dining area. He
started out with 18 guests but they kept turning green and leaving.
“I’m so happy you eighteen – er,
sixteen – folks were able to join me. You eleven must have sailed before. Well,
we have seven of us here to partake of the clam chowder. Both of you will enjoy
it.” The waiter brought out the chowder. “Take it away!” he said. “I don’t want
to eat alone.”
-end-
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