"If you have no idea what this headline means, I'm willing to bet my house that you don't have school-aged kids. Either that or you've been on an extended vacation in Reykjavík.
The "Silly Bandz" are little bracelets that most kids in town – girls and boys – are wearing. They come in a variety of colors and shapes — tons of them: coyboy hats, dinosaurs, ballerinas — you name it. There are even some with glitter, some with scents, and some that glow in the dark, which are not all that conducive to getting a 5-year-old to sleep, I've discovered. The vast number of different rubber band bracelets kids can buy is sheer brilliance on the part of the manufacturer and is particularly grating to parents, who are dragged to the toy stores repeatedly to pick up yet another pack of the buggers.
Oh, and did I mention that we're talking about rubber bands, here? Rubber bands, for Pete's sake! I'd love to buy an economy-sized box of the old-fashioned variety at the office supply store and call it a day.
Even though Silly Bandz have been around for a year or so, someone apparently decided that they were suddenly very cool and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kids are collecting as many as they can (we're talking hundreds) then trade, swap and evaluate their collections for volume and product selection all day long. They wear so many they go from their wrists halfway to their elbow.
The wave hit our hood about two weeks ago. One day, a trend-setting 2nd-grader wore them. And about 24 hours later, almost every kid on the entire street had joined in.
The teachers probably hate them as much as the parents do. About a week ago, they faculty at our school started banning them class-by-class. The kids were way more interested in glow-in-the-dark doggie bands than they were in the difference between acute and obtuse triangles. My daughter assured me that in her kindergarten class, Silly Bandz were still permitted as long as the kids didn't play with them. Look, but don't touch, was the policy.
Then last Tuesday, word came down from above. Our principal sent out an e-mail blast announcing that the bands were no longer welcome at school. The principal himself sounds like he's fallen under the Silly spell as well, referring to the bracelets as "clever," "charming," "creative" and "whimsical" in his e-mail.
I don't know about all that. They're rubber bands!
The reason I don't like them? My daughter wants to spend all of her money procuring more and more of the blasted things. (And no, I'm not paying for any of these purchases.) No matter how many she gets, I doubt it will ever be enough. Some kid out there will always have more. Or they'll have cooler ones. Silly Bandz have even sparked a full-blown melt-down one day after school when I declined to drive her (again) to the toy store. For me, anything that produces a temper tantrum loses any remaining scrap of appeal.
So now, they're school-time contraband. Which is sure to boost their coolness-rating exponentially. What better than an official ban by the authorities to make them even more desirable?
But I have an idea. If all the parents started wearing Silly Bandz, the fad would surely be dead before the week is out. Anyone with me?"
westport.patch.com
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