Sarsaparilla Alphabet #8

H - HELIUM

Psssssssssshoomp.

"Here ya go, kid. A big, red balloon." Justin smiled. Giving away balloons was his favorite part of being a balloon vendor, especially red ones, which turned everything on the other side of the sun the color of sweet cherries.

"Red?" asked the kid. "But... I want blue, Mister J." Mister J was what Justin wanted all of his regular customers to call him. It made him feel like he could be a role model for them while maintaining a certain degree of coolness.

He handed the kid a blue balloon, which shone purple on his face as the sun set. Justin closed up his balloon cart and wheeled it to his car.

Justin has always liked balloons as a kid, ever since he asked for a butterfly at his fourth birthday party and got a net filled with a hundred of the little things seemingly suspended in the air until their eventual capture. However, when he swung the balloon net, it only caught one, small, red butterfly among the many. It had shriveled up long ago, but Justin had tried to replicate it ever since. He was getting close, but when he swung his nets, they would sometimes catch five or ten or two or none at all. He did, however, create a host of other wonderful balloon inventions, such as a frying pan with a pancake that you could flip into the air, a full-size Great White Shark, and the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," all of which were made with (mostly) red balloons.

The obsession with the color red was probably a personal preference thing. Some people tend to buy clothes of one color, others paint their home's walls another, and some people only make balloon animals with the color red.

The next day, Justin arrived at the park and a sneer shot across his face. It was her, that blue balloon bending bitch, Catherine (They were both aware that it would've been a lot more poetic had her name started with a "B." But seriously, what's a good "B" name, anyway? Beth is short for Elizabeth and Bethany and Belinda are just kind of witchy. Catherine's parents certainly weren't expecting that.)

"Ah, I'm glad that you're here," she cackled. "You can have a front row seat to the unveiling of the greatest balloon sculpture ever created!"

Justin's face sagged. "Do what now?" To be honest, he was curious, but he was also nervous, as he hadn't created anything new to provide a witty enough retort to her – the "Sgt. Pepper" collection was entered into last year's nationwide competition. He had won third place.

At noon, Catherine threw up a loudspeaker in front of her face and her voice crackled across the park. "So you've seen the hundreds of squirrels around the park? Well, have you seen one that's 200-feet tall and can breathe fire?" And so, parkgoers came to see her giant, blue, fire-breathing balloon squirrel. Justin was there, too, off to the side. He was smiling.

Catherine screamed. "Let's fire this baby up!" She pressed a single blue button on a remote control and the giant, rubbery squirrel shot a 50-foot-long flame from its mouth. Catherine laughed triumphantly as the crowd ooh-ed and ah-ed, that is, until simple science made its presence known. The latex melted away and the animal quickly deflated into a depressing lump over the mouth of the flamethrower.

An astute man exclaimed, "It's gonna blow!" and the crowd panicked and fled the park. Justin grabbed Catherine and ran her behind one of the brick restrooms before the flamethrower melted itself and ignited its fuel. It resembled a small bomb as the entire park resembled a war-torn city in Palestine as the dust cleared. The two balloon artists emerged unscathed from behind the ripped restroom. Justin's cart had be blown next to them and everything that was inside had been ripped out.

"Hey, what's this?"
Justin sighed. "Another broken dream." He kicked the broken door off of the cart.
"No, I mean, this net-thing. Isn't this what that old guy Tantione made, that butterfly net?"
"Yeah, it's what made me get into balloons in the first place. I never got to figure it out, and now I never will."
"Here, lemme stick some of my blue butterflies onto it. Since red light has a long wavelength, amongst colors, anyway, the net won't work the way that you want it to. You have to balance it out, man. Just because you like red doesn't mean that you exclusively use it."

Catherine finished adding on some of her butterflies to the net. He took it in his hand, and swung at the swarm of red and blue bugs in the air. He smiled. He had caught a blue one.

Dispatches from an office desk, just beyond the bathroom

I need a creative outlet, to be honest. I'm a journalist, and yet I haven't been able to freely write by my own accord, even though I was in the features department at a fairly large newspaper. Of course, I was only an intern there and as soon as my university-owned apartment lease ended, I was out of the best job I've ever had, work, money, food, you get the idea.

Fast-forward a week later or so, when I'm walking my dog in the twilight hours when my mom calls me and says that I can't say "no" to a job that just opened up at the place that she works. So now, I get to do press release materials for an education center. Let me tell you about my short time in PR - it's bullshit. First of all, it's news writing, which can be fun, but I get a lot more out of features writing, simply because I can use colorful, expressive language and am able to do all sorts of amazing, fun things (go on roller coasters, be an archaeologist for a day, see my favorite radio show AND talk to the host while I wet my pants).

Second, PR is biased. PR benefits the place that you work for. You are not allowed to provide your reader (a newspaper editor, not an actual reader) a full view of everything that happened at the event. The place that you work for can do no wrong in its beautiful march towards improving the lives of everyone in the entire world.

I was optimistic at first, even though I had no clue as to what I was working on. The actual work that I've done here is quite minimal and most of my days are spent online and with an iPod (currently listening to "The Wheel and the Maypole" by XTC).

But what horrified me was when the director, an already creepy lady that smiles randomly during conversation (and I do mean randomly) and reminds me a bit too much of Professor Umbridge, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Center's vision. While it seemed ambitious, the whole speech, and her demeanor, reeked of a power-hungry attitude that frightened me a bit. Professing your desire for America to once again be #1 is okay, but the way she described the need for the Center to influence and have a hand in education curriculum seemed a bit extreme.

Enough about that, though. Let's talk about my office. The room that I'm in is shared by mom and a coworker. If you walk past them, you come to a small hallway within the room itself. This leads to a bathroom with a yellow light and a toilet built for midgets. Past that door is my desk, which I stole from someone that I think still works here. Sticky notes extol various motivational sayings:

- "2 wrongs don't make a right, but 2 Wrights make an airplane!"

- A "Pluggers" comic, and under that is written: "It's time to start Round 2 of our Health Club!"

- A worm looking at a cow's tail and professing his desire for its consumption

- A rather sad-looking drawing of a young great horned owl

Thankfully, I have a dentist appointment today, so I get to leave about two hours early! Hurray!