The Rainbow Loom

A boy and his loom cannot be parted.

So Santa didn't bring Joe a DS.  But Julie did get him a Rainbow Loom a few days after Christmas when she was at the mall with Grandma Connie so all is not lost.  The Rainbow Loom*, Fans, is a plastic pegboard onto which one can weave rubber bands in various patterns to be hooked in various other patterns with a crochet hook like tool to make rubber band bracelets (and other types of jewelry for your advanced Rainbow Loomers).  The RL is all the rage with your elementary school set--boys and girls alike--particularly with those who are a bit older than Our Hero.  Julie has a colleague who noted that the kids look like sweatshop workers doing piece work hunched over these things and that's a pretty accurate mental image: when we arrive to collect Our Hero from Kid's Place, there are easily eight kids huddled over their looms with their tackle box-like container next to them containing all their rubber bands.  It looks for all the world like a (color) picture out of How The Other Half Lives.

By now, you are all probably wondering where you, too, can get a true RL.   What could be more fun than making bracelets out of the colored rubber bands that look like what hip kids in the 80s with braces used?  Fans, you can get your RL at Michael's.  We know because Saturday morning found Julie and the bambini first at Jo-Ann Fabrics and then at Michael's in search of one of these tackle box-like containers.  Julie learned that Jo-Ann Fabrics is not an official RL purveyor and as they peddle only knock-off RLs, cannot offer the tackle box that holds the RL in addition to all the rubber bands.  As they left Jo-Ann Fabrics, Joe said with evident exasperation, "We should have just gone to Michael's."  (You can imagine how his tone and the sentiment went over with his mother who was on this seeming fool's errand.  Julie would note that when they entered the store, Joe said--and this is a direct quote, Fans: "It smells so good in here.  I want to stay here forever."  How fickle the five-year-old heart.)

But there is a God, because not only did Michael's carry these boxes that hold the rubber bands and the looms, they had them in stock--in blue, pink, and purple.  Joe selected a blue box and Julie, noticing that one could not buy an extra crochet hook tool, grabbed another RL thinking the extra $15 was worth the extra hook that was sure to be lost any day now.  (She also got a book that has step-by-step pictures for making the various designs because she was tired of, like, watching second grade girls--always the girls who have clearly taken Katy Perry to heart; ROAR!--on, like, YouTube, explain how to, like, hook this band over here, and this one over here!  And like, don't freak out if you mess up!  Because you can fix it if you don't, like, freak out!)

That, Fans, turned out to be one of the best $15 she ever spent because when she arrived home, she confirmed that the RL she had purchased at the mall was not a TRUE Rainbow Loom and--of course--knock-off RLs do not fit in the RL tackle box-like containers.  Of course they don't.  Of course they don't.  That, Fans, is patent law at work.

Now that the White House contains true RL, we can say that the knock-offs (or at least one of them) is, truly, but a pale imitation.  The true RL is better in every way, and we are pleased to report that Our Hero (and we) have mastered the simplest bracelet from start to finish.  You can see him finishing one here.

Naturally, Joe would like to make one of the most advanced bracelets.  But his desire to do so fueled his mastery of the simplest bracelet (because Julie finally got smart and told him if he wanted to run, he had to learn to walk) and now he's so caught up in making the simplest bracelet, that he's forgotten about the other--at least temporarily.

So, like, let us know, if you want a bracelet!  And, like, what colors.  We've got black, orange, blue, pink, and rainbow.

*You can read more about its origins here in a piece The New York Times did when the craze was taking off.