Okay its not THE Pond - as some call the ocean. And it is not just A Pond - as in smaller than a lake. It is a lake! I enjoy living on it and spending time on my back porch listening to music, gazing at the lake and pondering.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Mylar Balloons

Mylar balloons are strange things. I guess the material keeps the helium much longer than the rubber of normal balloon material.

Thursday the nation's attention was fixated on a large Mylar balloon which took flight in Colorado and might have had a six year old boy in the basket attached to it. It turned out he was not aboard and the news turned out to be happy news. But it did provide for a couple of hours of live TV drama.

Yesterday, for Boss's Day, my team at work gave me a couple of Mylar balloons with "Happy Boss's Day" on them. (I also got chocolate chip cookies but this blog is about balloons.) This morning. as I was trying to keep the Golden Retriever quiet while Debbie and Maverick slept, Shianne discovered them floating above the container to which they were tethered. She began to bark at them.

These two incidents this week took me back about 15 years to a story which has been repeated many times at holiday gatherings of the Clanton family and I will share it with you here.

It was a mid-November night sometime in the early 90's. Debbie and I were asleep with our Cocker Spaniel at the foot of our bed where she always slept. We were awakened by low growling as Taffy was warning us of something. As we cleared the sleep from our heads we noticed a light in the hallway.

Immediately we began to try to figure out what to do. Taffy growled more fiercely, Debbie whispered, "Call 911," and I whispered back, "Let me find my glasses!"

(Debbie will tell you that I was shaking hard enough to make the bed feel like one of those vibrating beds you used to find in hotels around the country. I do not believe that but that is her story and she swears it is true.)

We just knew we had a burglar in the house and we were trying to understand what we should do. I finally found my glasses on the bedside table and put them on. (I have to admit that by this point I had broken out in a nervous sweat.) I began to try and focus on the light in the hall. As I squinted I began to see more clearly that the source of light was not a beam from a flashlight but a reflection of light. I mustered the courage to rise from the bed and move toward the door to the hallway. It was then I realized it was a Mylar balloon reflecting light from a streetlight filtering through the window blinds. I grabbed the balloon in disgust and put it into the walk-in closet. Then we tried to still our hearts and go back to sleep.

Earlier in the month I had received a Happy Birthday Mylar balloon and it had escaped us and floated up to the top of our vaulted ceiling in the living room. Apparently it had lost enough of the helium that it had floated back down and then the force of the heater fan had pushed it down the hallway during the night.

The story does not end here.

The next morning I got up to get ready for work. As I opened the closet door the balloon leaped out of the closet and surprised me again! So, I got an ink pen and popped that evil balloon!

2 comments:

Jim said...

In the end...you beat he balloon! :-)

Jim said...

I love your pics from out there...we thought about moving to the lake back when we were looking at homes (and ended up here). No regrets, but it sure is a beautiful place...
Do you have any pics now that the leaves are changing?
Sydney and I had our "leaf tour" last Friday on my day off...things were just turning.