THE ORDINARY PROJECT
The Boy and The Red Balloon
“Perhaps balloons understand children better than adults do.”
It was a windy sort of evening.
Not the sort of wind that makes anyone cross, but the sort that has ideas of its own. It wandered through the tall grass, tugged at loose strands of hair, and seemed quite determined that nothing should stay exactly where it had been left.
His mother took a little red balloon from her bag and blew into it until her cheeks grew round. She tied the end with careful fingers and handed it to him as though she had just finished making something terribly important.
Perhaps she had.
He accepted it with both hands, not because it was fragile, but because it was wonderful.
For a little while he only looked at it. He turned it this way and that, watching the evening sun find its way through the red rubber until it glowed like something warm enough to hold.
Then, because all wonderful things must eventually be experimented with, he pushed it against his own face.
It squeaked.
He laughed.
So naturally he did it again.
The wind stole it next.
Not very far. Only far enough that he had to decide whether it was worth chasing.
It was.
Children are remarkably good at deciding such things.
Across the field they went, the balloon and the boy, neither of them entirely certain who was leading whom. Sometimes he caught it. Sometimes it escaped again. Neither seemed disappointed.
When he grew tired of chasing, there were strawberries to eat instead.
The juice found his fingers first, then his chin, then, with the confidence of all good strawberries, his clean white shirt.
No one minded. A shirt, after all, can be washed.
An evening cannot.
By the time the sun had wandered low enough to rest against the tops of the trees, the balloon had become many things: a ball, a friend, a secret, the moon once or twice, and, quite briefly, a hat. It never complained about having so many jobs.
Perhaps that is because balloons understand children better than adults do.
Adults are forever asking what things are for.
Children are much more interested in discovering what they might become.
Long after the strawberries had disappeared and the little red balloon had lost some of its bounce, I found myself thinking that perhaps childhood is nothing more than this:
A windy evening.
A mother's breath inside a balloon.
Sticky fingers.
A field big enough for chasing.
And someone small enough to believe that all of it was magic.
A Few Things I Remember
Along the Way
The balloon squeaked every time the wind caught it.
He spent almost as much time studying it as he did chasing it.
The strawberries stained exactly one clean white shirt.
No one minded.
The balloon lasted less than an hour. Childhood, thankfully, lingers a little longer.
I hope it still visits from time to time.
YOUR TURN
Every Story Begins Somewhere.
This one began with a little red balloon.
The next might begin with rain boots, pancakes, a favorite stuffed animal, an old pickup truck, or the way your daughter insists on wearing fairy wings to the grocery store.
It doesn't have to be extraordinary.
Because the ordinary was never ordinary.
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