It Will Do For Now

Gracefulness has never been a semblance of just being me. I stagger, swagger, stumble, and wade around the river Blue these days with almost clown-like antics. As the years have added up and the joints grown stiffer I find myself even more clumsy as ever before.

It's difficult for a man who at one time boasted he had cat-like reflexes to admit that he is indeed in need of a wading staff...but I am.

Since it doesn't look like I'm going to get said wading staff for Christmas I decided to make my own.

A couple of weeks ago I was piddling around in the garage and I noticed how Miss Carol and I had accumulated a collection of mop handles. They're the kind that has the interchangeable feature you know - simply unscrew the ole mop head and put a new one on. I found seven of these mop handles tucked in a corner of the garage which seemed rather bizarre to me. But of course Miss Carol may very well know something the rest of us do not... such as there's going to a nationwide shortage on mop handles in the coming year. Anyhow...

Being the kind of guy that always tries to take something worthless and turn it into something worthwhile I brainstormed on what I could do with these mop handles. I don't believe in throwing anything away without giving it a chance and I also believe the two greatest inventions of the twentieth century are duct tape and J B Weld.

Picking up one of the mop handles in my right hand I automatically realized I had myself a wading staff. It was lightweight, water proof, and almost nature friendly. I say almost nature friendly because it was the color blue. However I also spotted a half full can of forest green spray paint (that was sure to go to waste) so a marriage was made between useless paint and mop handle and I now had me a nature friendly wading staff.



I gave my new wading staff a test run recently and it works amazingly well. A staff acts like a third leg when navigating the river and also can serve as a gauge for your next steps. My mop handle wading staff is extremely light-weight and the only down sides I have found is that it's not collapsible and secondly it has to be tied on the body.

My make-shift staff is not perfect, but it will do for now.