BoldlyRide

A while back I promised to post a piece on automotive repair -- but couldn't find it. Well, I have found it and, quite frankly, it is tripe. But I stumbled on this piece which I enjoyed writing. So, as a change from the law and politics usually found here, in the words of that band of comic British idiots, "And now for something completely different:"


There is a secret war being waged in my household. Not the quick and dirty skirmishes
between children and parents with the various combinations of alliance that are harder to keep
track of than Iraqi warheads, but a genuine no quarter, clandestine, bloody clumps of hair and
broken teeth, take-no-prisoners, Terminator-persistent, war of the knife. There can be no
compromise and the conflict must ultimately have but one victor and one vanquished who will tell
no tales.
What can be the source of ruination of my household bliss? What satan-spawned demon
crys “havoc” and looses the dogs of war upon my domicile? What wrathful dragon has pierced
the sacred precincts of my threshhold to breathe destruction in our midst? What reign of terror
has usurped the throne of my abode? The cause of this domestic apocolypse: My daughter has
brought home a balloon. She went to a party and to every tot in attendance was tendered a tiny
tethered tuft of air: Evil on a string. The horrible that parades about my habitation wears a dopey, yellow, smiley face upon one side and a James Carville-like glare radiates from the sheen of the
opposite chrome hemisphere.
My daughter quite happily brought home the bagged bit of wind and escorted it into our
home. She’s quite fond of balloons in general and I am certain she knows the animosity that exists between me and her little inflated friends.
Our feud--and that word is really insufficient to describe the depth of our rancor--goes back many years to my young and tender days. As a child these helium-filled djinn first betrayed
me, promising hours of fun and games, bobbing on my command, only to escape when my attention was diverted. My grip would relax and in a flash the fickle fiend would depart, ascending into the depths of the overhead sea. I would stand and watch it, tearfully, until at last it disappeared, rollicking on the winds. Later, I learned to keep a tight grasp on the tether and never to release it except within the confines of my room. Yet the things would not cooperate in captivity. By the next morning, the balloon that had earlier probed about the ceiling for escape, would stand near the floor, barely holding up half the length of its string. Finally, it would deplete into a pathetic puckered patch of plastic, mocking my attempts to master it, leaving me only its decaying corpse.
The new balloons my daughter brings home are not the mere rubber envelopes of my youth. They are demonic combinations of metalic fabric imprisoning sentient vapors. They never flee from my daughter’s hand but faithfully follow her home. If allowed to die without assistance, they fight to the last, never admitting defeat. These balloons long ago forsook any attempts to escape; their sole purpose is to torment me. Their broad shiny surface reflects light into my eyes. They lurk about darkened doorways to frighten and surprise. They wedge themselves between the ceiling and the fan. They roam about the house as if they are kings, riding every breeze and waft of air, flaunting both their resilience and mastery of my domain. With age their tactics are more subtle. They love to hover just about that plane between my vision and that box which enrages, bores, or delights, the television, gleefully floating, even gloating, in front of the screen when my attention is most focused upon the scene.
In their death throes they still torment,
waiting silently upon the stairways to cause a scare, trip or stumble. But they give their worst
while still in their prime. They possess my daughter and annihilate my time. She loves to run
about the house, circling through the livingroom, kitchen, dining room and office with one of
more of the beastly bladders in tow. This is no silent process. She must yell and scream as her
rapid footfalls add to the clatter. The other kids yell at her and grab at the balloons so the
clammer rises higher. The attention only incites her more as she gallops under the spell of the
floating orbs. At last, by force, she has to be parted from the ethereal bouys and then she will
scream and stomp and curse me for ruining her fun. She will slam a door or two and fling herself
upon her bed. The balloons remain to scrutinize the devestation they have wrought.
In my daughter’s view the only thing worse than taking the balloons away from her is the
destruction of her cherished puffy pouches. If they pop while she plays with them--a rarity with
these new models--she doesn’t mind. If anyone else exorcises the demons, she screams and moans like a bag of cats on a trampoline. Thus the necessity for the clandestine nature of the war against the balloons. Only when my daughter is out of sight and she has found a new distraction of such significance that she will not recall that she ever possessed a balloon is it safe to take the fight back to those fluttering bags of flatulence. They seem to know when their protectoress has forsaken them and they melt into the household like a walking-stick insect in a twig pile. They quickly withdraw into rooms that I do not frequent, lurking in the children’s bathroom or finding their way into my son’s closet. Their attempt to hibernate out the winter of my daughter’s distraction proves futile. The memory of their vicious antics distresses me more than the beating of any tell-tale heart. I am only too pleased, once my daughter is out, to track down the vile zepplins and plunge sharp-pointies in fits of clandestine balloonicide.