Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Balloon Elder



This slightly shrivelled specimen is what old age looks like in the balloon world. Normally balloons live short, exciting lives that end abruptly, explosively, on a holly-leaf, a cigarette, or on someone's fingernails. The non-partying balloons we have kept in captivity for the past 44 days have, I hope, lived full lives. They have done the television thing, and the chasing the cats thing, the standing in the corner thing, and the swaying to music thing. Some of them have stayed together in pairs, while other lived a bachelor life. A few followed their own interests on their own.

The last thing that comes to balloons of a certain age is the shrinking. It starts with the symptoms you can see in our picture. It won't be many days now, I think, but hopefully we can keep our friend in relative comfort as we await the end. I steadfastly refuse the suggestion of euthanasia.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's had a good innings Willie.

You could always try botox. (for the balloon... not you). Put some sticky tape on the ballon and then you can inject it without bursting the balloon. I learned that trick many moons ago. I can remember that but I'm buggered if I can remember the mean value theorem. Don't tell my employer.

Willie_W said...

A yellow balloon is trying to cheer it up. But it has shrunken drastically since the last photo was taken. But in some ways it looks happier.