In the classic Christmas movie —  “A Christmas Story” —telling the story of Christmas, 1940, there’s a scene when Ralphy and his classmates all have to turn over fake teeth to their teacher, who drops them into a desk drawer that is absolutely brimming with Little Big Books, yo-yos, squirt guns, army men, chattering teeth and more contraband.
A generation later it was Rat Finks, Beatle rings, and Super Balls.
It just goes to show — it’s always something.
Now it’s Silly Bandz and schools around the country — most recently in Wichita — are beginning to ban the bandz.
Silly Bandz, for those of you who are out of the know, are thin, brightly-colored plastic bracelets that are worn in great numbers.
They just look like oddly-shaped bands when they are worn, but when they are taken off, they magically snap back into a pre-set shape — a comic book character, a flower, a pony, almost anything.
They’ve been banned in some schools because they have become a “distraction in classrooms and hallways,” as one recent press report noted.
Hooray!
We still have hope for our kids.
They have distractions that don’t require batteries.
They can be picked up at the local discount store for a few bucks.
All of the kids can afford at least one.
We still have kids out there, and not just miniature consumers, bent on spending a fortune on the most recent techno-development.
Bless you, Silly Bandz. You have renewed our hope for the future.
We can’t expect these kids to adopt Flower Power stickers for their denim-colored notebooks, or start dropping quarters in the gum-ball machine for bubble rings, but they are still kids, after all.
— Chuck Smith