Dear Me and the Changing Times,

Do you remember these old fads?

Kids used to carry around Pencil boxes FULL of these.  The more you had the cooler you were.  They came in the strangest colors, a lot of them not even readable unless you were writing on black paper.  Not only that but if you didn't wait long enough they'd smear all over the page.  Even still, I will always think of the thrill passing secret notes and the fun of writing in year books with as many different colors as you could when I think of these.  

Or these? I wanted a pair of these so bad in elementary school!

Patented by Rodger Adams in 2000 (says wikipedia), all you had to do with Heelys was shift your weight and you'd go from walking to gliding.  The coolest thing to see was some boy running across the playground and then all of a sudden break into a glide. Of course these shoes came with the inevitable injuries.  But then again, so did skateboarding and basketball. 

I did get to enjoy being a part of this fad though, and even now I see them around occasionally and I smile to myself:

Little did I know that they were Italian Charm Bracelets! It wasn't till the 1990's when a tourist saw them and brought this fad to America (again, information found on wikipedia) and I don't think they even became a fad until about 2000.  The great part was they were all unique, each charm put on there said something about who you were.  Then, It went from sparkly silver charm braclets to this, only years later:

 For 5 bucks you could buy about 24 rubber, silly shaped, bands that fit on your wrists like squiggly noodles.  Once you took them off they'd go back to their original shape whether that was a letter, or a unicorn or even Justin Beiber's face (another fad we're still suffering through...). This particular fad started in 2008 and since then "The Silly Bandz Facebook page now has nearly 255,000 fans, and on YouTube, some 2,000 videos have been posted about the bracelets, including a rap song that has been played almost 24,000 times" notes an article by Susan Barfield, writer for Bloomberg BuisnessWeek. 

The Silly Bandz hit my youngest sister's age group more than mine, but talking to her about it brought up so many memories of my own.  What other crazy fads are out there that I cant remember? What new ones are waiting down the road? I will say this though- trying to keep up with all the newest and greatest things can get overwhelming, so remember, as with everything else, just take it one day at a time.

All My Love, 

Bella '