This duct-tape wallet is worth $100.10. Photo by Tim Grobaty.

SpaceX is high above all the troubles of Earth after a successful and exciting launch on Saturday, and me? Well, I’m making a wallet out of duct tape.

It was 39 years ago when I was standing on a dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base squinting up at the sky awaiting the return of the first space shuttle Columbia. I watched as a distant white blur came into focus as the shuttle, accompanied by chase planes, finally glided in and stuck a perfect landing. It was a great and historical day and, look at me now, Ma! I made a wallet out of duct tape.

I have to admit it was quite an achievement and first of all I’d like to thank the Kristie at Duck Tape brand of duct tape, for her inspiration, patience and professionalism in guiding me along in my quest to make a really cool duct-tape wallet.

There are a lot of YouTube videos on the subject. Dozens and dozens, mostly telling me how much fun it is to do with the kids or how easy it is.

This was something I had to muscle through on my own, after my grown daughter took a pass on what would have been a delightful bonding experience. Now, she will have no fond memory to look back on after I’m, as they say, “out of the picture.”

I settled on the likeliest source, a no-nonsense tutorial by Kristie, an employee of Duck Tape.

How no-nonsense was it? Despite the fact that the woman was standing in front of a rainbow display of the various colors of Duck Tape brand duct tape, she chose to make her demonstration out of the basic aluminum-gray tape.

I hoped she wouldn’t mind if I chose to be a tad more creative. For this project, assigned to me by my overly-eager-to-help colleagues at the Post and Business Journal (I believe it was the idea of our Ad Manager/Director Andrea Estrada), I went with three tapes: yellow, purple and black-and-white-checkered. A sort of mashup of your Los Angeles Lakers and the Long Beach Grand Prix.

One thing I learned in my deep dive into the background of duct tape, is that there is such a thing as duck tape (a similar product though not as all-purpose as duct tape), and that its use preceded duct tape by nearly half a century.

Obviously, I am using the latter-day tape for my wallet project and the first thing you have to know, if you don’t already (for instance, if you have a clear understanding of the word “tape”) is that duct tape is sticky. And not the normal kind of sticky that can get easily unstuck, but the kind of sticky that if the sticky part sticks to another sticky part, the whole stretch of tape is ruined. Once you tear off a length, do not let it twist (as it is just dying to do) into itself. You’ve got plenty of tape in a roll, so just write it off as another of your ever-increasing pile of failures as represented by balled-up duct-tape snafus, and more carefully this time, rip off another length.

There are a number of wallet styles you can make, from a simple billfold just for paper currency, to a tri-fold model with multiple pockets for credit cards and even a window pocket for your driver’s license.

I chose the mama bear middle one with room for a crisp $100 bill and one pocket for a credit card and driver’s license.

Sad confession: I had planned for my wallet to have multiple pockets but…something went wrong. I don’t really care to talk about it.

Sad confession No. 2: The one pocket I successfully managed to make turned out to be upside down, but my daughter assured me that kids these days are totally into upside-down pockets in their wallets.

My finished product didn’t quite come out as a stirring tribute to the Lakers and the Grand Prix. And, if I took another shot at it, I think I could make a better one, but I don’t feel that duct-tape (vegan!) wallet making is where I want to make my mark.

Still, I think I can call my debut work a success. It holds your money, which is a wallet’s raison d’être. And, besides being functional at its base level, it’s also cutting-edge hip, with its fashionable upside-down pocket.

Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.