Charlie the Good Red Balloon

There’s a red ballon in the pale blue sky, floating gently upwards towards the heavens. There is nothing that can stop it from its destiny. A little girl, Daphne, stands far below the balloon, looking up watching it grow smaller and smaller. She’s not totally aware of it but she’s thinking in these terms; that her balloon is now more free than it was when it was held in her small soft hands, before she accidentally let go of the string. Now its free to have its own adventure in life. I wonder where it will go next, she wonders. Maybe it will find another little girl like me. Maybe that girl and I will meet and become best friends for the rest of our lives.

The ballon reaches a certain altitude and then travels northwest across the city for several miles before a downward current pushes it into the receptive old oak tree growing on the front lawn of Suzie Brown, age 8. The ballon lodges in the branches and stays there until the next morning when Suzie, notices it through the kitchen window while she’s eating her breakfast.

“Mom, look!” she says, pointing out the window.

An hour later dad is climbing the tree, risking life or limb to retrieve the balloon for his daughter. Susie is grateful for her father for getting her the balloon. She holds the string tight in her hand so she doesn’t loose it like the last owner apparently did. Someone has drawn a face on the balloon in black marker. Its a silly happy face with a big toothy grin. She wonders who might be missing their special balloon. I bet it’s another little girl like me, she thinks. I wonder if we would be friends if we met.

The balloon, not being a regular red balloon is sentient. Don’t ask me how this happened, I’m just the narrator and I don’t have all the answers, but the balloon is somehow self aware. Balloons don’t have senses in the same way that  little girls do, but they are aware of their surroundings none the less.

This particular balloon, which Suzie has promptly named Charlie, was aware that he was serving as a kind of divine matchmaker. Drawing across the sky an invisible thread that would link two souls and change both their lives forever. This was Charlie’s only mission in life, and time was short. Charlie could feel his once tight body starting to soften slightly.

In her room Suzie tied the balloon to the hand of one of her dolls and set up a whole scene around it. There were other dolls and toys present and she was of course playing the parts of all who were present; each one had it’s own voice, and was a free thinking individual with total autonomy. (A word she wouldn’t learn until she was twelve but she still had an unconscious sense of what it meant.)

Charlie was the leader of the group, a real bossman. He was giving the others instructions, including Suzie. “Stand up straight” he said to her old doll, Maggie. “Eat your breakfast” he said to the plastic elephant, Ele. “Tell mom you want to go to the park” he said to Suzie.

“Oh, I’d love to go to the park! What a great idea, Charlie, thank you for the suggestion” she said pulling the string down in a bop bop bop motion to animate the balloon as if it were alive. She found her mother in the kitchen cleaning up and boldly announced her desire:

“Mom, Charlie and I would like to go to the park!”

“Oh, that’s a nice idea. Let me ask your dad, I know he wanted to work on cleaning the garage today.” Replied mom.

“It’s important, mom. We have to go.” Suzie said in an earnest plea.

“Okay, I’ll…” she started to say when dad came in the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” He asked…

They pulled into the park at exactly 11:27am. They parked the Subaru near the playground and got out. Suzie put her hand thru the loop of the string, she couldn’t risk loosing Charlie to the wind that was starting to pick up. The park was fairly busy on a Saturday morning and there were other kids playing on the jungle gym, screaming with glee like wild animals.

“Want to swing?” She asked Charlie, looking into his drawn eyes and waiting for a response. She imagined that Charlie winked at her as a sign of approval.

“Good, me too!” she said.

A girl came down the slide as Suzie was walking up to the swings and she noticed the red balloon tied around the girls wrist wrist. “MY BALLOON!” She gasped. She looked at the girl holding it and felt a deep curiosity about her. She didn’t feel any jealousy that this strange girl had her balloon, she just felt a strong interest in talking to the her. She waved to her mom and signaled that she was going to go swing and her mom waved approval.

The girl walked up slowly and sat in the swing next to Suzie. She smiled as she walked up and then looked at the balloon and noticed the face that she had drawn on it the day before with the black marker she got from the kitchen drawer.

“I like your balloon” she said, not revealing yet what she knew.

“Thanks, my dad found him in our oak tree this morning” Suzie replied, and then added “his name is Charlie. It was his idea to come to the park”.

“That’s really neat” the girl said, looking at the balloon and grinning.

“And what’s your name?” the girl asked.

“I’m Suzie, what’s your name?”

“Daphnie”

“Want to be friends?” Suzie asked.

Daphnie looks again at the balloon and remembers what she had thought when she lost the balloon. She is subtly aware that some kind of magic has happened but she doesn’t know how to describe the feeling she is having, she just knows that somehow loosing her balloon has allowed her to find a new friend.

Charlie is aware that he has fulfilled his life’s goal and relaxes just a little more. His weight pushes down on the string which no longer stands straight but sags a little over the girls wrist.

“What a good balloon am I…”