Silly Bands

"Hey, is that a silly band?"

Yadira was pointing with a surprised expression on her face at a thin blue bracelet that was around my wrist.

"Yes, it's a turtle. I see you have a few on your wrist as well," I replied, trying to make small talk with her while finishing writing review problem from the nine times multiplication table.

She dug into her pocket and pulled out a tangled mess of what I realized were a lot more than "a few" silly bands.

"I have hundreds and hundreds. I collect them from my friends. I have a turtle too, but my favorites are the fairy and the princess ones."

"I hope you're working over there," called out my supervisor, noticing the jumble of rubber bracelets that had exploded onto the social scenes of all grades. I had gotten the turtle silly band from a friend during our junior year AP English Language Class. She had decided to give one silly band to my friend and I, so we could "unite" every time we had class. They were small, thin bracelets, that when removed formed a certain shape: a dinosaur, a wand, a trumpet, almost anything. They had started out as a middle-school fad, but by this time, everyone had silly bands, from first graders to twelfth graders.

I motioned for Yadira to put away her bracelets, and pushed the notebook towards her. "Come on, Yadira, you have a math test tomorrow, and we want to make sure you get 100%, right? Because then your teacher will give you a pretty sticker. So we have to practice, alright? Finish these few problems for me. I know you'll do well," I smiled at her, hoping that her self-confidence would increase.

As she worked on the problems, I looked at my fellow mentors. The mission of the mentoring program, A2Z Mentoring, was to help underprivileged kids with not only their school work, but also their self-confidence and self-esteem. Although I had only been at the program for a few weeks, I could proudly say that yes, at the end of each lesson, a bond had formed between me and whoever I was mentoring. It was something that couldn't be explained. We were supposed to mentoring them, but looking back, it was really a quid pro quo relationship.

"All done, Nikki."

"Well done, Yadira! You got them all right. Looks like you get a sticker," I smiled as I gave her a high-five. She was bouncing in her chair, trying to get the supervisor's attention. As soon as the supervisor came over, she pulled my arm, "Tell her how I did! Tell her how I did."

"Yadira got all her math problems correct, " I said, watching Yadira's smile grow even bigger.

Yadira received a sticker, and after she decided where she was going to put the sticker (the top of the front cover, the center, next to the blue sticker etc) we worked on her other homework. She had a social studies test on the structure of government-we read the textbook aloud. She mispronounced many words, looking up every time she couldn't pronounce words like "representative" or "democracy", hoping that I wouldn't notice.

At the end of the lesson, as she was packing up her school things and waiting for her mother to sign her out, she pulled something out of her pocket.

"This is for you, " she smiled as she handed it to me.

It was an orange silly band.