Balloon Soccer

Written Late September 2010

By mid-afternoon, a few of the birthday balloons from my freshly-decorated desk have detached and are floating around my cubicle. Walking back from the copier I kick one up in the air and start juggling it with my knees and feet like a soccer ball. A coworker walks up and I excitedly tell him, “my brother and I used to play balloon soccer in our living room when we were kids!”

Expecting a “Wow, that’s so cool! We should hang out more often,” all I get is silence.

I start trying to make him understand how awesome it was to dodge our dead grandmother’s lamp and other highly appraised antiques and to occasionally smash foreheads while attempting to hit the front of a bookshelf with a balloon. But I know it is futile. He will never appreciate our games to ten, win by two, that would somehow go on for hours. He will not be able to hear the ZZ Top CD skip in the background when both of us jumped and landed at the same time. He would not picture our mischievous smiles when Dad yelled for us to “knock it off!” Nor would he feel our sadness as the last birthday balloon deflated and we would have to wait until the next May or September to do it all over again.