Balancing Act
Bottle flipping trend captivating for some, annoying for others
The latest youth craze has parents flipping out: water bottles, slightly less than half full, that go twirling through the air with the flick of a wrist.
And what goes up must come down, often with a thud. It’s either the sound of the bottle landing or parental sanity leaving the building.
The goal for this game, which has captured the imagination and attention of not a few adolescent boys, is to make the water bottle land upright. It’s especially cool when the rare “cap” happens and the bottle lands upside down and remains standing. There are thousands of videos on YouTube demonstrating the bottle-flipping prowess of several across the nation.
Colton Easley, a sixth-grader at Fouke Middle School, started flipping bottles a year ago.
“It actually first started with me watching a video. Then everybody at school started doing it. I thought it looked fun, so I started doing it, and it got addicting,” Colton said. “It’s a challenge to see how fast you can do it, how many times you can do it or how many times you can make it flip before landing.”
He estimates that three out of every four attempts, he can land it.
“I’m actually really good at it now,” Colton said.
Colton’s mom, Kabecca Easley, does not share her son’s enthusiams for the pastime.
“It aggravates the living fire out of me,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not just him doing it. Now he has his little sister doing it in the house. All you hear is thump, thump, thump.
It’s annoying.”
Ethan Thornton, also a sixth-grader at Fouke Middle School, is another fan of bottle flipping.
“It’s just kind of fun. You can play horse doing it just like you can with a basketball. If you don’t land it, you get a letter. … It’s the challenge of it,” said Ethan, who’s run into a bit of pushback because of the activity.
“I got in trouble at school, and at home my mom sometimes doesn’t like it.”
Brandi Thornton, Ethan’s mom, has double the flipping because Ethan’s twin brother, Dylan, is also a fan.
“It’s super annoying. They have to go in their room. The repetitive noise over and over and over is constant. They scream and holler when they land one, but it’s OK if they’re in their room,” Brandi said.
To Kabecca, bottle flipping harks back to simpler times before electronics ruled.
“I remember playing jacks with the ball and jacks,”
Kabecca said. “We didn’t have carpet, and you could hear those jacks hitting the floor, and that drove my mom crazy. I can understand her 10 times better now, but I really wish kids enjoyed more of the stuff we did back when I was a kid.
“I think they miss out on a lot of stuff like tire swings and climbing trees to see how far up they could go or getting a pinecone and playing baseball with it. It’s stuff like that the newer generation is missing out on. It’s all about electronics and being inside.”
Brandi said as annoying as bottle flipping can be, she likes to see her children enjoy an activity that doesn’t involve a screen.
“I’d rather them be doing that than spending time on electronics and stuff,” she said.
She also sees a light at the end of the tunnel, and thinks water bottles might soon flip on out the door.
“Fidget spinners are next. My kids are starting to get into those,” she said.