Being a younger sibling makes you trained to see opportunity. Sustained by a constant stream of hand-me-down clothes, books, and even games, I learned from an early age you need to be resourceful. When my older brother moved away for grad school, there was no delay before I migrated to his room; it was larger, closer to the bathroom, and right next to the WiFi router.

I carried my desktop over to the room, hooked up my gaming system to the TV, and set my monitor and keyboard on my brother’s old desk. This room was mine. Everything was going perfectly until I noticed one dreadful catch: the desk had a wobble.

There was a sliding platform underneath the desk made for a keyboard that was missing a large, stout screw needed to secure it to the main body. This left it without proper support.

Immediately, I went on a search for a replacement screw. I rummaged through drawers to get screwdrivers of varying size and walked into my mom’s office to get a plastic tub of screws. I methodically looked at and tried every type of screw in the box to no effect.

They were all either the right width but too long, or the right length but not wide enough at the base. Still, I was determined. I wandered into the depths of my dark, stone-floored basement to continue my search.

There was a whole closet full of tools and screws and the like, and I went back to my room only to find no results.

Losing faith in screws helping me, I decided to turn instead to adhesives. I found a tube of Gorilla glue in my basement only to discover that it was hard as a rock and useless. No matter, as I also found a package of mighty putty while I was in the basement. Clearly the putty should work.

Upon opening the package, I was assaulted by the product’s distinctly foul smell. After applying it to the desk, I discovered that it was long expired and lost any of its intended adhesive effect.

Worthless.

Not giving up, I continued my search through the house for anything that could work in fixing my desk. Finally, I found the answer: duct tape, a large tube of wood glue, and an aluminum baseball bat.

The glue needed several days to take effect, so I had to find something to keep the platform in place while it dried. This is where the duct tape and bat came in.

I used the duct tape to hold the pieces of the desk together temporarily, and then I wedged the baseball bat underneath the compartment to make sure that it was firmly propped against the glue. It worked. I woke up the next day to find a desk finally fixed.