MARK MY WORD: DUCT TAPE HELPS PARENTS, KIDS STICK IT OUT WHILE SICK

There's more to taking care of your sick kids than being a nurse. Parents have to be entertainment directors too.

With our two children stuck at home due to illness much of last week, I felt like a cruise director during my shift at home.

There are only so many video tapes, computer games and video games that kids can watch. Sooner or later, they want something else to do to occupy their time.

In Bailey's case, that meant it was time to play with rocks. Our 4-year-old just loves stones, pebbles or just plain gravel.

The base of a fake tree in our living room is covered with pebbles. Bailey routinely likes to excavate there, pulling out all the pretty rocks.

While home sick the other day, she had me join her excavation team. She carefully assigned me the task of helping her recover what she called "the pretty rocks" and the "bad rocks."

The "bad rocks" were the routine pebbles that didn't stand out in the crowd.

Before long, we were using a spoon to mix the rocks in a bowl on the living room couch, which doubled as an imaginary oven.

Bailey decided she would make rock soup and various other lunch specials, which she then served me while I sat in the rocking chair.

Meanwhile, 8-year-old Becca was bouncing a ball in the dining room. Soon, I was enlisted to play ball with her, which involved bouncing the ball a specified number of times between us.

But none of these activities compared to their skating game.

The girls used up the end of a roll of paper towels and Scotch tape to make skating shoes. They ran out of tape while manufacturing their skates on the kitchen floor.

But being a resourceful dad, I quickly resorted to man's best friend, duct tape.

I used the gray tape to hold their paper-towel shoes together.

Soon, the girls were skating over the dining room floor. But it didn't take long before holes appeared in the paper-towel shoes covering their bare feet.

Becca and Bailey returned to the kitchen for skate repairs. "We need more tape. We need more tape," they pleaded.

I took one look at the torn towels and agreed they needed some major repairs.

I picked up my handy roll of duct tape and proceeded to put more and more tape on their makeshift shoes. Before long, the kids' feet were covered with so much duct tape that it was hard to even see what was left of the paper towels that initially made up the shoes.

"Only a dad would cover his children's feet with duct tape," my wife informed me when she arrived home from work.

I proudly agreed.

Some people can skate through life even when they're sick. But it's a whole lot better with duct tape.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer with the Southeast Missourian.