Once upon a time about 30 years ago in the town of Hutchinson there lived a man that was a jokester. There was nothing that he loved more than telling a good joke or pulling something over on someone.
When it came time for your birthday he would either decorate the windows and garage door of your home or your place of employment’s windows with signs about your age and your birthday. He always came up with a poem or rhyme about your birthday.
He would do the decorating in the middle of the night at our house, even though he was scared to death that he might get shot by my husband as an intruder. Every noise he heard would heighten his anxiety. Even when he was driving home he was nervous when he saw lights behind him, but the thrill of getting caught must have made it even more fun for him.
My friend Liz, that I worked with at the Northgate Salon, was married to this jokester, whose name was Cliff and they made quite a pair because what one couldn’t think of the other one could. They were trouble for everyone they knew from the moment they got together.
There came a time when something new hit the market that claimed it would glue anything together and it would stick forever. There was only one problem with this new wonder product……………..it would also stick your fingers together or your fingers to any object.
The only thing that would take this new miracle glue off or allow you to get your fingers apart was acetone (fingernail polish). If you poured it on or soaked your fingers in the acetone the glue would dissolve and finally allow you to pull them apart. But sometimes you would still lose some skin from one finger as it came unstuck from the other finger.
Liz came to work one day with a story that took her several tries to tell us because she was laughing so hard. She would start to tell us then when she got to a certain point she would break down laughing so hard she could hardly talk and the tears were streaming down her cheeks. The story was about Cliff and the tube of Super Glue that she had bought.
Cliff thought the new Super Glue was the best thing to come along since sliced bread. He thought it would fix anything that broke around the house. It replaced duct tape as his fix all and besides it would not show when it was used, unlike the unsightly duct tape.
She could get through the part about a piece of the window air conditioner that had fallen off or broken the night before, but that was about as far as she could get for awhile. Then she would start laughing so hard she couldn’t talk and the tears would roll down her cheeks. She would go back to work but promised to finish the story later. Finally after about 4 tries she got the rest of the story told.
The air conditioner was hanging in a bedroom window of their home on 12th street and was accessible from the front porch. Cliff decided that the new super glue was just the thing to fix the air conditioner so he took the new tube and proceeded to the front porch to fix the piece that had come off.
Liz was busy cooking supper in the back of the house while he was working on the air conditioner. She had been in the kitchen about 20 minutes when she got to a point she could leave the stove and set the table. She walked into the dining room and it was then she heard Cliff frantically calling her name. She could tell he was still on the front porch so she went to the door to see what he wanted.
She was not prepared for what she saw when she opened the door. There stood Cliff facing the window with both hands resting on the top of the air conditioner. He had this frantic look on his face but everything else looked normal to her and she asked him what he wanted.
He proceeded to tell her and then beg her to help him. “I am stuck to this #*&%# #*%#! air conditioner he stated in not so nice language! Get something to get me loose from this thing!”
The broken part was neatly mended and stuck back in place and looked really good, but there he stood with both hands, all ten fingers, securely stuck to the metal and no way to extricate himself from the self inflicted situation.
After she stopped laughing at him, while he yelled obscenities at her and demanded she get him loose from the air conditioner she went into the house and grabbed the bottle of finger nail polish remover (acetone) and took it back to the porch.
Once back at his side she poured some of the acetone on his hands and told him to wait a few minutes and then try to wiggle them loose. It took several applications of the acetone (almost the whole bottle) to finally get the glue to a point where he could unstick his fingers from the air conditioner.
When his fingers finally popped loose from the metal there was skin left behind from at least 8 of the 10 fingers. I am sure his fingers were sore for weeks after that little adventure but it was not the last time he was stuck to something and had to be rescued by Liz. But that was by far the worst and the funniest.
From that day on I called him the Super Glue King and I got a scowl and a look that should have wilted me in my tracks every time but it was too much fun to finally have something I could zing him with.
Whenever I hear the song “Stuck On You” by Ray Stevens, I think of Cliff and I can imagine him in all the situations that are in that song. I miss my friend Liz and Cliff, the Super Glue King, they were quite a couple and always kept us laughing. To Contact Sandy: [email protected]
