People used to say that the Inuit had over 400 words for snow. Even though that story is now considered largely apocryphal, (and offensive to boot), it still sounds plausible to me. Let’s see: there’s “stinging little balls of hard snow” snow; “snow that piles up on your car seat when you forget to roll up the window at night” snow; “snow that absolutely dumps the day after they close down Snowbowl for the season” snow–I could come up with 400 just off the top of my head. For that matter, I’m sure I could come up with 400 descriptive titles for lots of things, not the least of which is the 400 things children can find to cry about. And topping that list would have to be “Inconsolable Crying: On the Untimely Death of a Favorite Balloon Animal.”
My son Clyde is especially affected by this particular form of crying, no doubt because, for some reason, he has decided that every balloon he encounters is going to be his new BFF. And, in a way, they are; unfortunately, though, to a balloon “forever” means approximately 45 minutes. Unless, of course, you’re talking about a balloon animal–then it means 45 seconds.
I just have to ask: what genius came up with the idea for balloon animals? Isn’t the trauma of losing a regular balloon bad enough–do we really need to make it worse by fashioning them into the shape of some sort of adorable creature? What’s next? Edible pets?
There is nothing–except perhaps rehab and the substances that get you there–that can give both the high highs and low lows that a balloon can give a child. No one is happier than a child who has just been handed a balloon; conversely, no one is sadder than one who has just seen their balloon pop. It is a sadness so deep, so real, that I would not be surprised to find that Germans (who may not have 400 different words for snow, but do have a word for just about everything else) don’t have a word just for that. (I would also be surprised to find out that word isn’t featured at least once in “99 Luftballoons.”)
Here’s the thing about balloons: they always pop. Always. What this means is that when a child is given a balloon, there is a 100% chance that they will end up miserable: there are no other possible outcomes. Let’s face it: it’s not like the balloon will one day hold an honored spot at their 50th wedding anniversary–it will be gone. Oh, I know–everything dies, everything falls apart, the Universe itself is in a constant state of decay–but, with most things, this all happens at a far enough remove that we can live in denial. Even a goldfish will live long enough to take the sting off of that final flush, but a balloon is nothing more than dharma writ large. Which, if you ask me, is a little much for a five-year old to take. Not that you have to be five to be devastated by the loss of your balloon. Realistically, only single celled amoeba would consider the life span of your average balloon to be sufficient, and even they would still have those moments when amoeba kid #1 inadvertently sits on amoeba kid #2’s balloon poodle mere nanoseconds after it was acquired from the Amoeba Balloon Lady, thereby sending amoeba kid #1 into a funk for the rest (approximately 7 seconds) of his life.
You’d think, knowing all this, that we as parents would give balloon artists the same wide berth we give to boxes marked “free kittens,” but we don’t; we actually encourage our children to go up and get their own shiny blue piece of latex misery.
Maybe that’s because of the 400 different words for “stupid,” word number one is “parent.”