Balloon Boy

I think the recent balloon boy hoax would have been much better if they had claimed that their child had turned into a balloon, rather than was inside one. I would have ordered a big silver balloon like the ones you see at festivals, and then drawn a face on it with my left hand in marker pen. Then I would have released it and called the media. I would give interviews saying that my son had been claiming he was unhappy and planning to run away for some time, and that I hadn't believed him until the day I opened his bedroom door with a breakfast tray in my hand just in time to see him wobble merrily out of the window and spin off into the sky. I would say that my son had taken recently to eating spoons, which must be where he was getting the metallic content necessary for his shiny new head, and he had been practicing drawing faces with a marker pen when he should have been doing his chemistry homework. I would then write a book filled with beautiful anecdotes of happier times, searching desperately through my memories of his childhood for any sign that he may one day grow discontent and transform into a balloon. I see this lost balloon boy son of my imagination as a haunting metaphor for the desperate triviality of modern life, for the shimmering beauty of our dreams, and for how lost we all are as we reach for the sky. I wonder if a doctor could helium.