Rubber Band Madness

By Sabrina Yeoh

On Monday, May 9th, 17 MILLION rubber bands had taken over New York (Harbor Classroom 302) situated on Harbor’s third floor. 

As the first bell rang, signaling the start of A-block, the Mr. Thompson Rubber-Band Birthday Surprise mission started. The Journalism students and Juyoung Kim (12) began the assault by pouring bags of rubber bands around New York. But as the tenth graders came into New York with bags of orange rubber bands during the passing period before B block, Mr. Thompson, the owner of New York, realized that this would continue all day. Soon, New York was covered with ORANGE RUBBER BANDS everywhere. 

As Mr. Thompson commented: “I initially tried to clean up the rubber bands from my desk, but I stopped trying when I realized MORE rubber bands would be coming in every 45 minutes.” 

The attack continued during the passing period before every block that Mr. Thompson had a class.  As a result, the classroom had become Rubber Band Wonderland. For the rest of the day, students in New York struggled to listen as the rubber bands were too tempting to be played with and shot across the room–it was a tough day to teach. 

Finally, free from the rubber bands’ attack, Mr. Thompson ate his lunch on his rubber band-flooded table and he decided to grade his AP English Language and Composition students’ essays. As he was stressing about how to provide the appropriate comment for his student’s essay, a knock broke his concentration. Instead of more rubber band attacks as he expected, he was greeted with “Happy Birthday to you...” His frown turned into a smile. Cecelia Sheng (12) entered the room with a cake with three blue candles accompanied by Grace Chung (12), and I singing the Happy Birthday song, and Adelynn Tan (12) filming the surprise that I had planned. As we were enjoying the cake, Mr. Steinkamp, as instructed, came into the room with a bag of rubber bands to pour all over Mr. Thompson’s room. Apparently, not only students were part of this mission, but six teachers, including two administrators, were involved.

During Mr. Thompson’s AP X-block, instead of giving his AP Lang. students the final preparation for their test the next day, it became a “How to Make a Rubber-Band Ball” and “Rubber-Band Clean-up” X-block. While he was giving his rubber band balls tutorial, Anna Phuah (11) came in with a chocolate cake with a firework candle. The juniors gathered around to celebrate his birthday and even asked him to blow out the firework candle (which is impossible), but he believed it and blew it thrice–almost burning his beard. 

As the last bell rang, the Mr. Thompson Rubber-Band Birthday Surprise mission had come to a successful end. But it didn’t actually end in New York. As Mr. Thompson walked to his car, he was greeted by an unexpected rubber band tied onto his car handle. It was the perfect last touch by me to end the rubber band madness. 

 

Rubber Band Tied onto Mr. Thompson’s car, Photo Credit: John Dale Thompson