Born Out of Necessity and Frustration

Who were you Richard Drew?

In 1923, Richard Drew, a banjo player at honky-tonks with a degree in engineering, reluctantly joined the 3M company located in St. Paul, Minnesota. At the time, 3M only made sandpaper. Drew was product testing 3M's Wetordry brand sandpaper at a local auto body shop when he noticed that auto painters were having a hard time making clean dividing lines, called masking, on two-color paint jobs or where glass or chrome separation was involved.

Drew was inspired to invent the world's first masking tape in 1925 as a solution to the auto painters' dilemma by adding a slightly different adhesive mixture to the paper rolls that held the sand for sand paper. It was an invention born out of necessity and frustration.       

Five years later, Drew was perfecting and marketing his first masking tape and trying to determine how much adhesive he needed to add to other materials to make them stick similarly. The body shop foreman became frustrated with the sample of clear cellulose tape and exclaimed, "Take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!" Now the term Scotch had nothing to do with being a racial slur. It was a reference to being cheap beyond common frugalness.

Drew added more glue as the foreman suggested and really liked this Scotch Tape term for marketing purposes so he used it when 3M patented it. You could say that something Drew him to inventing it, probably the fact that we would need tons of it to secure the wrapping paper to our holiday gifts or re-securing the packages so we could return them to customer service once the holiday was over.   

It appears that the most popular holiday gifts given this year needed virtually no Scotch tape. The top gifts were gift cards according to Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. It allows the giver not to have to worry about giving too personal a gift and getting some detail wrong and still offer variety and easy use. My wife gave them like hot dogs and hamburgers at a company barbeque. She chose a virtual cornucopia of cards. Bj’s Wholesale actually sells them at discounted prices. It was a compromise born out of necessity and frustration.      

She happened to give a movie theater gift card to a close friend and, while they were on break, the friend decided to invite her to accompany her to use it. My wife seemed reluctant to join her friend, because of the large amount to work she still had to do with her private psychological testings and other household chores that were put in the back burner during the time leading up to the actual holiday. I tried to cajole her into taking a break and asked which movie they would be attending. “Hugo” was her response. After a brief pause I said with a smirk, ”Me go? No, You go! She is your friend not mine.”

Suddenly I noticed a lull in our conversation and then a dial tone. (Hello? I guess it served me right for being a smart aleck.)   

Besides gift cards,there was another popular gift this holiday season that also required no scotch tape. It was live pets. Puppies were super popular. You would think that in this economy, one would not want another mouth to feed, that was not going to eventually grow up, graduate, get married and then help put you in a nursing home. Specifically genetically altered mixed breeds were at the top of the list. Puggles, Maltapeeks, Cockerdoodles, Hypo-allergenic Portuguese water dogs and more were hybrid in quantity to be given as presents by humans all across the states, which are literally born out of necessity and frustration. Sadly it’s the necessity to make money by pandering to the common senseless and the frustration of having something special or unique to brag about.   

Which is a shame when there are so many great potential pets crammed into our animal shelters and pet adoption centers. A shame that there are so many deserving and needy animals, whose sole wish, was to be adopted by a loving family this holiday. But people seemed to choose the brand new manufactured canines instead of loyal leftovers. It goes without saying, that the most popular new breed for this holiday was a mix of an English Pointer and Irish Setter. It is a great breed for active families, even though they have a tendency to war within itself for independence. It’s called the Pointsetter!