The search for the Board Stretcher

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When I worked construction on summer breaks during college, we used to mess with the newbies/ rookies. One young guy in particular went by the nickname "Lerp", and he was a few bricks short of a full load.

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We would constantly send him out to the work van to get a left-handed screw driver, a metric screw driver, muffler bearings for the generator, etc. One day, I was on the roof installing the plywood roofing with sheets of plywood measuring 4 feet by 8 feet (4' X 8'). Lerp was my "cut man" on the ground.

I yelled down that I needed a piece cut to 96 1/2 inches. He hooked his tape measure on one end of the sheet and pulled it out to the other end. A confused look came over his face, and he unhooked the tape measure, hooked it again and stretched it out again, and got the same puzzled look on his face.

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"This piece is only 96 inches," he yelled back up to me on the roof.
"Get the board stretcher out of the van!" I replied.

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After 10 minutes, he came back from the van and said, "I couldn't find a board stretcher".

I responded, "Just throw it up here, I'll make it fit".

I'm not sure if to this day, he knows there is no such thing as a board stretcher.