mellowThis particular duct tape wallet has served me really well, considering the haste in which I assembled it. It was the first day of August, 2003. Friday. I remember all this because it was the first night I saw
rob_matsushita's adaption of Psychos in Love. It was also the day I renewed my cellular phone contract, and the first time I'd paid anyone to cut my hair. For those who don't remember or didn't know me when I had long hair, I used to look like this:____ // \\ //O--O\\ || .. || ||####|| |\#--#/| || "" ||
, only slightly worse.
Anyway, I remember having looked at the newspaper that evening and discovering Rob's play. I calculated that I had either just long enough to walk to the theater or just long enough to screw around for fifteen minutes and drive there. Guess which one I chose?
I had decided that day to stop using my leather wallet.
evil_jim had given it to me as a gift because my duct tape wallet had needed replacing, and I'd been using it for a couple of years. It's a nice, attractive wallet, but it's extremely large and (unlike the duct tape wallet) wasn't much of a conversation piece. I decided that it was time to make a new one out of duct tape. I took a manilla folder, measured and cut it, covered it in duct tape, and added appropriate pockets. The whole process was complete in under ten minutes, and I went out to the play.Skip ahead nearly two years. The duct tape wallet is starting to have issues. For one thing, duct tape eventually shrinks. Bills no longer fit in it without more folding than I'd originally intended. More importantly, the heat from being in my pocket causes the glue in the tape to melt, which doesn't affect bills but any cards in my wallet are now covered in black glue. It feels tacky (as in sticky) and it looks tacky (as in tacky). Duct tape wallets usually last longer than this one has, but I was expecting this one to fall apart even sooner, since it was a quick and dirty job to begin with.
My solution (since I had time at work this afternoon) was to make a new wallet out of a worn-out sheet protector and some packing tape. It has more pockets than the one it's replacing since I had more time to put it together, but it has its own problems. First of all, the packing tape is extremely visible, which is just kind of ugly. Any taped wallet is going to have the same problem, but the old one was uniform in color. Second, it's not so flexible as the duct tape wallet was. It doesn't fold as well, and it feels a little sloppy when I put things inside it. I think it will hold together without coming apart, but I'm not entirely sure. Either way it's clear, and that's kind of neat.
