Rubber Bands

For years, my routine would be to get the newspaper off the driveway, remove the rubber band as I was walking back to the house and then automatically slip the rubber band on the inside doorknob as I came through the door. It's what my parents used to do, I remember. I always knew where to find a rubber band when I needed one.

I can only assume that this bugged the hell out of Walt and one day he cracked because one day I went looking for a rubber band and there wasn't a doorknob in the house that had one. He had removed them all. I think he may even have ... oh, I know it's too impossible to conceive ... thrown some away.

Now even I have to admit that my rubber band habits could easily get out of hand. When you figure that we subscribe to two newspapers (The Davis Enterprise and The San Francisco Chronicle), and that there are often bonus news flyers or shopping newses or whatever that come with rubber bands wrapped around them...not to mention the ads that people affix to our door with rubber bands, all too quickly you find that you are having trouble opening the door because the collection of rubber bands now extends beyond the doorknob itself!

But you can't just throw away a rubber band, for Pete's sake! You never know when you're going to need one.

You might have to close a bag, or pack up a bunch of CDs to give to someone, or keep a spool of package ribbon from coming loose, or make a finger pistol and shoot a rubber band at someone, or put your hair in a pony tail (even given the fact that my hair has been too short for a pony tail for decades...but you never know, right?), or keep your stack of paper money in place, snap your wrist when you're tempted to do something bad, or make a substitute ribbon for a gift (call me cheap...but rubber bands now come in pretty colors, right?).

We used to have lots of rubber bands around here when the kids were younger and had paper routes. In fact, I think I still have a huge bag of rubber bands that David bought when he was delivering newspapers, but they are all so old now that if you try to use them, they tend to break.

(Wouldn't you think I would actually throw something like that away? But the idea didn't occur to me until I just typed that paragraph!)

I don't understand the physics or chemistry of rubber bands. You have this perfectly good rubber band. It sits in a drawer, in a bag, untouched by human hands, and 20 years later you try to use it and it crumbles in your hand. What happens to the material? Does that happen to the rubber bands in those big balls of rubber bands that people collect? (I'm sure someone will write and tell me).

Walt was off at the opera the other night and I went out to pick up the paper. I did think about it as I took off the rubber band and then, feeling guilty, stuck it around the doorknob of the front door.

I felt like my life was back in sync with nature again!

So tell me...what do you do with the rubber band from your newspaper...and if you throw them away, where do you get rubber bands when you need them?