...Balloons!...

Balloons inside of balloons. 

When I was a kid, 

that was pretty much the 

epitome of technology. 

Christ! 

How did they do that?! 

Surely Oppenhiemer was involved. 

Surely Einstein, Durex and 

Trojan were on the design team. 

Yes, with myinsightful comprehension 

of thermo-plasmics at around age six, 

technology didn’t get 

much better than that. 

Sure, I know you’re gonna’ want to 

throw the concept of television at me but, 

that which was TV 

   simply     was. 

Indeed, that which 

showed up on the front of the screen 

was nothing more than some 

organic aspect of nature. 

Pure reality. 

A fact of life. 

But… just say you could get 

a balloon inside of another balloon? 

That… 

That most certainly mesmerized me. 

And…

And if there was a period where 

such mesmerisation amongst others 

   came to wane, 

then I was compelled to run around, 

hug each one in turn, 

   spin about, 

point at them balloons and say, 

“Lookit!    Look  at   it! 

Can you fuckin’ believe it?!” 

(This may explain why my parents 

    bought me so few 

balloon inside of balloon balloons) 

Okay. 

Perhaps I’m exaggerating here, but… 

Wow! 

That there was some cool shit.

What else was cool? 

Well, since you’ve asked, 

   I’ll tell you. 

Ball-point pens. 

Well, no… 

More than that. 

The fact that my grandmother had 

a whole drawerfull of ball-point pens. 

Can you imagine? 

How did she do that? 

How could anyone 

have acquired such treasure? 

Sure. She was pretty old. 

Real old. 

Had grey hair and I believe 

someone had said 

she was up there in her fifties, 

so yea, she was pretty damn ancient. 

But listen. 

Let’s stay on track. 

There was between thirty to 

a million pens in that drawer, 

and that means she would 

somehow have to have been 

collecting more than 

one ball-point pen a year 

for frickin years. 

Think about it! 

My god, it’s mind-boggling! 

Pens. 

Pens with buttons. 

Pens with protruding nibs 

that spewed 

gooey dark ink. 

Anyway, 

I couldn’t wait to get inside grandma’s drawers. 

I… 

Her ball point pen drawers! 

Calm the fuck down! 

Listen. 

This was about the ball-point pens. 

(It’s always about sex with you people).

Where was I? 

Oh yea. 

As an innocent young lad, 

you give me a fresh ball-point pen 

  and a pad of paper… 

Man. 

I was good. 

I’d draw me some airplanes 

  with big guns on ‘em; 

huge rockets exploding into space; 

submarines sneaking into deep damp secret caves and… 

Oh yea. 

Girls with balloons. 

Girls with great big balloons. 

Dude. I could draw me some balloons! 

Did I mention 

my fascination with balloons? 

Yea baby. Balloons. 

Balloons el grande. 

Balloons of such proportions that… !

Wait. 

I just now depleted my 

goo spewing pen of all its ink. 

Give me about fifteen minutes and 

I swear I’ll be fully reloaded and 

ready for action. 

                                               

 ©05 Jack David Hubbell