Screen Repair Tape and it's Practical Use for Covering Holes in Van Seats

I remember the days of my grandmother endlessly and tirelessly sewing small holes in the old screens every spring when my grandfather retrieved them from the old barn loft to put them up on the windows before bug season.

What pain-staking detail, carefully looping a needle in and out of the small screen holes to ensure the hole wasn't enlarged.

After noticing a small tear in my front window screen, I came across a new product called screen repair tape on a roll, no sewing necessary, just cut to length and stick!

Late Tuesday evening, after doing the evening chores and watching Hardcore Pawn (one of my favorite reality television shows), I made sure the children were fast asleep and I put myself to bed.

Wednesday morning we were expected to wake up very early for an 8 a.m. appointment for my daughter to make sure she wasn't coming down with strep throat. She had been called home early on Tuesday after the nurse discovered she had a minor case of the sniffles and a bright red throat.

I wanted to make sure everyone got enough sleep to have a healthy and rested day full of activities scheduled for Wednesday.

If it wasn't enough that I had three scheduled appointments on Wednesday morning, afternoon and night, and we were out of eggs, which is another entry on my already full and double-booked appointment schedule, I was now laying awake at the sound of someone yelling, "mom".

I was dreaming. I remember it quite vividly. My husband had texted me to meet him at a new restaurant in town. It was late. I drove up to the curb and parked my car. Rain was pouring down from the East, cars were driving past with their headlights on high beam, and I ran to the front of the entrance with my coat covering my wet hair.

I ate alone. My husband never showed. The bill wasn't placed on the table, so I got up from the red leather booth and wandered over to the cash register to pay my dues. The cashier asked for $11 for my meal of Mei Fun, shrimp fried rice, and a large diet coke. As I looked in my wallet for money, I pulled out a wad of cash, so large it started to grow in my hand. I couldn't keep up with all of the bills. I had to separate them on the counter by 20s, 10s, 100s, and 1s. Handing over a $20 and saying, "keep the change", I walked back out to the car with the money in my hand. The amount had grown three times the original size and would barely fit in my handbag.

Walking over to the car, I had to avoid a river. There was literally a lake rushing down the road now as cars swerved to miss me as I dodged puddles and rushing water to get to my car door.

The car in my dream was one I drove almost 20 years ago. It was very strange, but there I was trying to figure out how to unlock it because it didn't have automatic locks. I open the car door and sit down, but now, I can't pull my foot in fast enough. The door swings back and opens with a hard wind. I grab at the door again and try to close it, but something is holding the door from closing. It was something invisible as my leg was inside, but it was as if my foot was blocking the door from closing. Just as cars driving out of control came down the hill with a rush of flood waters, my car started to drift downhill.

"Mom!"? What? I woke up thankfully just in time. That was one dream that floated out of my mind as soon as I opened my eyes. It was my son. A quick peek at the clock. 4 a.m. His clock's battery stopped working and he didn't want me to wake up late.

After making a pot of coffee, breakfast, packing lunches, and starting laundry, I drove the children to the 8 a.m. appointment.

Once at the appointment, everything went well. The culprit was allergies.

School opened in 10 minutes, off to the donut shop for more coffee, and back to school to drop off the children.

The school is within walking distance of the donut shop and upon walking back, there was a police officer guarding the school entrance. We walked by him, no worries, children went inside and I went to my van.

I opened the door, sat down, and POP!

What was that! It felt like the backside of my pants exploded. Because they did!

It occurred to me as I was sitting there a little dazed not knowing what just happened that the backside of my pants had just ripped completely open.

In one of those maneuvers where you are afraid to look at something, like the scratch you think you'll need stitches for, I started to turn to my left. Another POP!

Good grief! To my horrific disbelief, as I was pondering what in the world was going on, I realized I had no choice but to stay put. After all, my pants were exploding in the seat of the van and if I played it off, no one would even notice. Any knee jerk reaction would certainly cause a stir among all of the parents wandering around the school property, coming and going.

Back around June sometime, or maybe the first part of July, I hit a really amazing clearance sale at Walmart on these athletic pants. $5 a pair. I bought five pair.

They are really comfortable and stretch easily for exercising, gardening, and house work. Plus, they look really good with sneakers unlike my dress slacks.

After purchasing these pants, I folded them nicely and put them away. I really took care of them very well so they would last.

First time out of the wash, I noticed holes on the backside on the right of each pair of pants. I thought it was strange. Each pair, all five exactly, received holes. Identical holes.

It was too much of a coincidence. Holes in the pants? Really? Moths? Bugs? Critters? Dogs playing tug-of-war? Cats kneeding? What?

Well, far be it from me to figure out. Until one day my washing machine broke so putting two and two together, naturally one would assume that the pants may have gotten snagged on the mechanisms in the washing machine that were no longer functioning properly.

For months I wore these pants with holes. The holes started getting bigger. I knew I wasn't gaining weight so that wasn't the culprit.

My husband and I went hiking. I had on a long t-shirt and as we were about one mile in to the walk, my husband noticed something very odd. Downright strange to be exact.

He stopped me in awe as he stuck his finger through the hole in the back of my shirt!

He said, "the holes line up!" What? "What on earth are we discussing here dear?", I replied.

Leave it to my husband to figure out that the holes on my shirt lined up directly to the holes on my pants.

This was definitely going to require the services of Sherlock Holmes to figure this out.

As soon as we got back home from hiking, my husband scoured the basement. He vacuumed from top to bottom to make sure there were no bugs or other cloth eating pests that may have taken over the basement. As odd as it sounded, they only had a particular taste for my clothing as no one else had holes in anything.

Next, we started separating my laundry, even to the point of washing it in a different laundry detergent all together.

As hilarious as this will seem to most, it was actually a day of relief for me.

One can understand the emotion that runs through a person whose pants just exploded. In fact, my brain went on a little paranoia streak for moments afterward thinking how bad that could have been if it happened earlier. Walking past a patrolman with a hole in my pants could have surely landed me in a hoosegow.

Sitting there, I started to laugh. Now I was certainly not trying to make a mockery out of the ordeal, but it just struck me as so funny. Tears were streaming down my face as I sat in my van, other parents driving up and pulling away after realizing an insane person was at the wheel of a van parked in the school yard that they would not want their children influenced by.

Trying to put my van in reverse, and being the old van that it is, it decided it had enough of my hysterical nonsense. It wasn't budging.

It wasn't as if I could get out and push it now was it? With a hole blown out of the back of my pants, surely someone is going to notice that! And being in a school yard with a police officer nearby, there was no way I could summon someone. I would have certainly drawn attention to myself yelling "help"!

So what was I to do?

I drank my now cold coffee in silence. I had my laugh but it was no longer funny. The situation had deteriorated. I was alone as I left my cell phone back home mistakenly plugged in to the charger.

After the entire parking lot was full and no one would bother coming in to find a space at that point, I decided to attempt to drive off again. Not wanting to look mysterious or suspicious, I carried on as if I just needed a moment to compose myself which was the truth of the matter.

Finally, reverse worked, I backed up and went home.

What is one to do with a pancake size hole over the left you know what?

Thankfully I live a little way off the main strip and was able to get out of the van without too much attention. I walked backwards to my garage door and went inside.

Think! Think, what do I have around here. I must have something to fix this. Wait!

How did it happen in the first place?

My curiosity got the best of me because now that I'm out of the embarrassing public eye, I thought, what really did cause the gaping wide open space in my favorite pair of Danskins?

What could have caused it? I walk every day! Certainly I didn't gain that much from eating those extra servings at dinner yesterday.

Placing a towel around myself, and walking back through the garage to the van, I started inspecting very closely.

To my dismay, I found metal mechanisms poking through the fabric on the driver's seat on both sides.

No wonder only my clothes had been coming down with hole-syndrome for the past several months. No wonder no one else had holes in their clothes! It wasn't invisible moths eating cloth after all!

Now for the best part of the story and what this article is titled after.

Six months to a year ago, I saw this stuff advertise on television. I'm not much to order anything on television, but I happened to find it in a magazine afterward and ordered it through the mail.

It's screen repair tape for fiberglass screens.

At first I was skeptical that it would really work. Somehow screens get holes and tears in them and are too expensive to replace. I purchased this screen repair tape to cover the holes. I never got around to doing it. I still had two brand new rolls of screen repair tape hanging around somewhere. I just had to find it.

Locating it quickly on my workbench in the garage, I changed out of my ruined pants and in to something more appropriate.

I went back out to the van and just as I suspected, the screen repair tape would work much better than duct tape.

Cutting off a little portion of the tape, I covered each hole on the van seat.

It was so easy to trim with scissors and it is self-sticking.

Now I had to go somewhere to find seat covers to cover up those holes. The point of the screen repair tape was to keep the holes covered with something that the metal could not break through. Unlike seat covers which may not be made of material strong enough to prevent another break-through, the screen repair tape is very strong.

I purchased seat covers in a boxed set of two for less than $20, but they are kind of cheap. It's ok because I didn't need anything too expensive and it's much better than sitting up against sticky screen repair tape on the seats.

Now I'm safe once again to drive without worrying about anyone deflating my ego, busting my bubble, oh you get the idea!

Next time I have a totally booked schedule on the middle of a very busy work week, I am going to take public transportation. It seems logical to me.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my story. Have you ever had a day like that?

I would love to hear your stories!