When I say that packaging tape never gets olds, I mean it. I mean it figuratively, and I mean it literally. Literally, packaging tape does not age. It doesn’t have a shelf life or an expiration date. You all know what I’m talking about. How many of you saw the same rolls of tape down in Dad’s workshop from kindergarten up until junior high, when you stopped going in there?

There were all sorts of weird tape; like drywall tape, that cross-hatched kind which seals the seams of drywall to make the wall look nice and smooth. The occasional roll of barricade tape that Dad picked up at a yard sale, or at least that’s what he told you. As an adult, you are pretty sure it has to do with some crazy experience down in Myrtle Beach but it’s probably best to not ask questions, especially when it comes to barricade tape. Or even just duct tape. For instance, there was this roll of brown duct tape down in my dad’s work shop for years.

Years and years. It was probably a gag gift he got at the wedding shower when he and my mom got married, like, As A Husband, You Can Never Have Enough Of This: When Your Honey Wants You To Fix The Faucet, Duct Tape, When Your Honey Wants You To Keep The Dog From Getting Outside, Duct Tape… Blah blah blah. They probably went on for hours with duct tape jokes, laughing all the way. Anyway, my brother and I brought it out one year when we were trying to make a rocket ship out of our Radio Flyer and wound up using the entire roll. It hadn’t deteriorated in the slightest. In fact, it was so intact that the wagon had sticky residue stripes all over up until the time we finally scrubbed it off for a garage sale about a decade later.

And, of course, figuratively speaking packaging tape does not get old. In this modern day and age, we are always going to need it. I mean, there is never going to be some new thing that wipes out the need for packaging tape. It’s not going to be staples, that’s for sure. Some sort of chemical compound would just be a pain in the butt. If you really think about it, packaging tape is going to be in the picture until the end of time…