You can fix anything with duct tape!

Every once in awhile I think of random, bizarre, and/or funny stories from my past. Since I have no better place to share them, you, my fellow readers, are going to get to enjoy them.

I was on Facebook this afternoon and noticed that one of my friends had joined a group called "Duck Tape Users Anonymous" (sic). This reminded me of a fabulous duct tape story.

I was 16 years old and working my first real job--lifeguard at a neighborhood pool. We had four pools--the Big L (7-lane lap pool with an extra jut on one end that made the "L" shape), the diving well (home to 2 low and 1 high board), the baby pool, and the adult pool. The pump room for the Big L was pretty impressive. There was a lot of water in that pool. Anyway, there were tons of pieces of PVC pipe in the pump room routing water to and from the pools. Some were straight; others were linked together at 90 degree angles. One day, one of the angle connector pieces broke, and water started spewing forcefully from the pipe. We shut off the water and headed up to the office manager's office. His name was Donny. He was an idiot.

We explained the situation to Donny and asked for a few bucks so we could run over to Home Depot and buy a new PVC connector piece. Donny was also a cheapskate. He threw us a roll of duct tape and stated, "Just use some of this! You can fix anything with duct tape!" Thinking he was joking, and then quickly realizing he wasn't, we tried to politely argue that duct tape would not hold together two PVC pipes with who knows how much water pressure pumping through them. We continued to balk, and he finally accompanied us to the pump room to demonstrate how well duct tape works.

He wound that roll of duct tape around the two pipes... over and over. We stood back and tried to stifle giggles. Then he told us to flip the switch to turn the water back on. I stepped outside of the pump room. The switch was flipped. The duct tape immediately tore apart as the two pipes burst apart again. Water flooded out of the pipes.

At that point, Donny handed us a $10 bill and told us to hurry back.

Donny is the same man responsible for the serious electric shock I received from the pizza oven while working at the pool's snack bar, but I'll save that story for another day.