This is not the actual rubber bands we used....The ones we used were this big before you began pulling on them!  They were awesome!!!

Rubber band wars with Dad

My younger brother Tyler and I used to love having rubber band wars with our Dad when we were growing up.  These encounters started when I was around 7 and was about 4.  

My grandfather (Mom’s Dad) worked at the post office in the maintenance department and would occasionally acquire 15 lb bags of the most perfect red rubber bands that were ever invented on the planet.  When we would visit them he would give us kids a bag ever so often.  They were about 8” long if you laid them flat on the table and had just the right amount of stretch to them.  In fact, we as kids never did get them to stretch to their full potential....this will come into play in a moment.

My Dad would set this up so that my brother and I were at the bottom of our cellar stairs and he was at the top of the stairs.  The staircase was just a set of wooden steps, no railing, no walls, just wide open to the basement.  My brother and I would put some chairs in front of us and hide behind them while my dad just sat in his chair at the top of the stairs.   My Dad would yell down, “Ready, Set, Go!”  The war is on and already I’ve gotten grazed by a red rocket that left a stinging sensation on my left thigh.  OUCH!,  that was too close!  They were coming at us so fast that we hardly had a chance to get a shot back at him for fear that we might get snapped when we popped ourselves out from behind our chairs.  This situation would go on for about a half hour before one of us would end up getting a good hit across the face or bruised lip and that would be the end of the war.  These things were hummin’ at us and they would leave marks for sure.  Once in a while I would hear a squeal from my brother and I knew he’d been marked pretty well.  We had so much fun doing this; We couldn’t get enough!  I distinctly remember my Dad laughing his fool head off each time we would get tagged by his shots and squealed in temporary fun-pain.

Now, the reality of the situation is this....Tyler and I didn’t understand physics or gravity or anything like that so this is what you get when you have two knuckle-headed kids willingly ready to play a game at a serious disadvantage.  An adult who can pull a rubber band back about 3’ to 3.5’ and sitting about 10’ above his targets will undoubtably rain blistering shots, that almost have a tracer-effect, on his two targets below all day long.  The two kids at the bottom will shoot the same rubber bands, but will only be able to draw them back about 1’ to 2’ AND they will have to go AGAINST gravity.  By the time our shots even reached Dad the rubber bands were big wobbling “O”’s that he would just pluck out of the air and return them to us as scorching lasers that would eventually hit us with a resounding WHAAP! and we would SQUEAL!!!!

The lesson:  Kids, at least reverse the positions of yourselves and your Dad when playing this game.  It will never be fair, but at least you’ll have a fighting chance!

JC