“I hate balloons.” Is something I hear after every time the kids get balloons. Adam drives home from where ever we were and complains the whole time about the little floating pieces of rubber or Mylar clogging up his view out of the rear view mirror, drifting up front between the seats and bobbing around us. They always get knocked back, and I always hear “I hate balloons.”
When it was child happily sitting in the back of the car with one balloon it was perfectly fine, a Norman Rockwell moment even. Two children with two balloons floating in the back became a bit annoying. Not to mention a bit more dangerous. So policy became that all balloons had to remain in your lap. Well damn mom that’s no fun was the look in their eyes. Then it became don’t let them float up front, because they will be popped by mommy and daddy. I know that threat sounds cruel, but you only have to threaten once, they love those damned balloons so much that even the thought of their floating joy leaving them is heart breaking. Add child number three, or four or five, and two balloons per child and holy cow, it’s like the entire store of balloons has followed you home. And they insist on bopping them. The noise of balloons bouncing off knuckles is amazingly ANNOYING.
If you’ve made it home without crashing the car or actually popping a balloon or two don’t think you’re scot free. Next comes the part when you have to get the balloons into the house. Because your children will or do refuse to keep the damned things tied to their wrists, you have to manage to hang on the string and get the kid out of the car. Hang on to your hat, or balloons ladies and gentlemen, because one just floated away up into the air. Either you have let it go on purpose or accident or they have let it go definitely on accident, and open up the flood gates, the natural disaster of the century , or of today is about to strike and torrents of tears arrive.
Now if you are like me or my husband you are doing a happy dance in your head while your kid or kids are shouting and crying about their beloved balloon flying away from them with unbelievable height and speed. You are doing your best not to smile while your little one is crying his/ her eyes out. Now you can do one of several things, and if you have one child easing the hurt is easy, as easy as ensuring them that on your next outing you will get another balloon. Hopefully they will forget about it before your next trip out. If you have more than one child making them forget their floating friend is impossible, because the other kids have theirs still. Okay so while you are doing an Irish Step Dance in your head, the kid is crying and you try comforting them, so the options are limitless. But these are the ones I like.
A. You can talk the other children into sharing.
B. You can give them some other little treat. I call this my shut the hell up stash and it works wonderfully well.
C. You can distract them with something else.
Now my girls are pretty good about sharing. They really do love each other as much as they protest to that fact with their fighting. But sometimes it just doesn’t work. The shut the hell up stash ALWAYS works, at least for that moment.
One emergency down, sweet! So now the other kids have a death grip on their own string and as you head for the house you remind them to keep the balloon down so it doesn’t hit anything and pop. They pull it close to them and refuse to enter the house, some of our ceilings are stucco, and not a good environment for balloons at all, unless they are Mylar. Dang Mylar anyway. They decide to play outside and you agree, because well let’s face it you are hoping that the damn thing will get loose and fly away.
Next thing you hear or see is another crying child dragging a limp string behind them, sigh, the process begins again. You are doing a happy dance, and very seriously you ask “Oh no what happened?” Between sniffles you make out that “I don’t know what happened. I only put it in the grass.”
Ta freaking da! Grass, that annoyingly fast growing plant that covers our yards and we fight with to maintain control of our yards has helped us. It’s the only reason my entire yard is not rock covered. And the kids always forget that grass is sharp. It doesn’t poke them or feel sharp to their very tough skin. How easily it will bring a balloon low. Unless it’s Mylar. Damn Mylar anyway. So you are trying not to laugh at them, and try to explain that grass is very sharp and sometimes it can even cut people.
This is usually the part when I am mentally rubbing my hands together. Two down, one to go, and hopefully my plan will work, if I am persuasive enough. To my child with the last balloon standing I suggest that she let it go. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t, and most of the time they share that balloon, until they go to bed, and by the next day the balloon is just barely floating above the floor. Unless it’s that Mylar crap. Those things take forever to die, and unless you really whack it with something, hehehehehe, the kids will learn that the hard way, but they will last an excruciatingly long time.
So we are back to “I hate balloons”. What once held as a source of joy for us, from childhood to adulthood has now been tainted by the annoyance of over exposure of the above the scenarios.
So I say. “Awe come on honey, balloons aren’t that bad.”
Adam rolls his eyes at me and says, “I liked balloons too, until I had kids, now I hate balloons.”
