Silly Bands

If you have anything remotely to do with children, at any age really, at this point in time they may or may not be obsessed with silly bands.  My son..obsessed.  Maybe not totally obsessed like the kind where it seeps into every sentence or I catch him daydreaming about his next trade- but I can see it coming.  For those of you that don't know Silly bands are like the new pokemon (garbage pail kid trading cards for my generation).  Let me explain them to you as best as I can and then you fill in the logic.

Silly bands are jelly bracelets on crack.  

Unlike the jellies of our time, these are shaped like anything you can dream of.  Crabs, superman, drums, words, famous places, you name it and they likely have a silly band for them.  We first learned of silly bands when we had good friends over for dinner this summer.  She's young (like 25 young) and way cooler than us and was wearing these bracelets that look like hair bands.  Addi ask 'what's that' and she pulls it off and shows us a flower, just like that.  We are all amazed and go about drinking wine.  Fast forward to the first week of school and I find out that teenagers are beside themselves with these little bands.  Here's the crazy part, the transcend gender, age, race and every other defining factor that you can list.  EVERYONE LOVES THEM!  Now, kids are trading them up all the time.  In fact, one elementary school has BANNED them!  Can you imagine that auto dialer home..."dear parents, please do not allow your children to wear silly bands to school.  they are too distracting."  Hmmmmm...anyone else worried that the education of our youth is about to get comprised by a band made in China for a 1/10 of a penny????

So today, Will gets off the bus, walks up to give hugs and kisses, and says 'Please mom, can we please get silly bands.'  He got a crab yesterday as a reward for his reading and lost it today on the playground.  I can't help but love him for this as I was busy at school an hour earlier discussing the social influence of bands on markets.  So, we agree that he will buy them with his money and that I will transport him to the store (this sounds illegal but it's not).  We have 30 minutes to make the purchase and Rite Aid is out of them.  We RUN down to Hallmark and, as if we won the lottery...they have a rack of freshly displayed silly bands.  Best. Day. Ever.

Will chooses the pirate themed ones because they glow in the dark and in the car proceeds to put all 24 bands on one wrist.  I turn to look and he disappointingly says 'I'll have to buy more....they don't go up my arm.'  But they glow in the dark.  And it is with that, that WIll decides he has some
 leverage for trades tomorrow on the playground.  And this, this is where the obsession begins....