{"id":11080,"date":"2016-05-13T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=11080"},"modified":"2016-05-12T20:32:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T01:32:37","slug":"blue-rubber-bands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=11080","title":{"rendered":"Blue Rubber Bands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"DSC_0091\" href=\"http:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1619\/26354632560_5e67fb829a_s.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"DSC_0091\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1619\/26354632560_4a8c9353cd_h.jpg\" alt=\"DSC_0091\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1143\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For our ninth wedding anniversary, I picked up nine gifts and hid them around the house for Andrew to find. One of them was a blue rubber band ball I found while browsing Anthropologie. I saw it and immediately knew it would make Andrew laugh; for the entirety of our relationship, he has carried his license, cards, and cash in a doubled-over rubber band instead of a wallet. I saw the ball and thought,\u00a0<em>a hundred wallets!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Upon buying the gift, I stood grinning while I handed the store clerk a few dollars.\u00a0<em>Is this all for you?\u00a0<\/em>she asked. And I felt compelled to tell her my story, even though I rarely chat up strangers. As soon as I told her about my quirky husband&#8217;s wallet habit, her eyes teared up.\u00a0<em>OH!\u00a0<\/em>she said, completely choked up,\u00a0<em>My father used to do that! It takes a\u00a0certain kind of man to carry his things inside of a rubber band. I miss him so much!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And then there we were, two complete strangers with tears in our eyes \u2014 all because of a simple story and a reminder of something sweet about people we both loved: about someone I was still able to love, and about someone she was missing, about two strangers now connected. I think we can reach people with our stories and openness. I was so touched by our interaction, I think it will stay with me whenever I see Andrew pull out his blue rubber band wallet.<\/p>\n<p>Have a lovely weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For our ninth wedding anniversary, I picked up nine gifts and hid them around the house for Andrew to find. One of them was a blue rubber band ball I found while browsing Anthropologie. I saw it and immediately knew it would make Andrew laugh; for the entirety of our relationship, he has carried his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=11080\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Blue Rubber Bands&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-11080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11080"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11205,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11080\/revisions\/11205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}