Postal worker’s fun project: A big rubber-band ball

Before turning away from the counter and heading out of the downtown Vancouver post office, the customer just had to ask: “Is that real?”

“Yes,” Connie Brown confirmed from the other side of the counter. “It’s all rubber bands.”

Measured by diameter, the big rubber-band ball on Brown’s work counter is just shy of 12 inches.

That got Brown wondering, and she grabbed the measuring tape that she uses to check package dimensions. She wrapped it around the “waist” of the rubber-band ball to measure the circumference: It’s 35 inches.

By still another standard, it’s a four-year assemblage.

“One day, I had some rubber bands in my hand,” Brown said. “I was wondering, what can I do with a handful of rubber bands?”

Her project has outgrown the small household-variety rubber bands, but “I have a drawer full of big ones,” she said.

Brown doesn’t make a daily addition to her work in progress. But the ball is an every-day part of her job at the U.S. Postal Service office at 1211 Daniels St.

“Every day, people comment on it,” Brown said.