The balloon boy incident - a different perspective

I know by this time, many of us are tired of what's being called the "balloon boy" story. But before it goes away and leaves our consciousness (which it should), I want to talk about a couple of things that this brought up for me, and perhaps for other people too.

I happened to catch wind of the balloon boy story (sorry for the pun) on Twitter. It initially seemed like a joke, or almost whimsical - boy flies away in balloon. Then I found the link to the story on a local news website, which then linked to the live video of the balloon from an Air Tracker.

And this is where the story really gripped me. The live video from the Tracker was truly frightening.The balloon was at times flying so fast and so high, it was almost beyond comprehension to imagine what a boy trapped in that balloon might be experiencing. The fact of watching it live made it that much more intense. That kid is either dead, I thought, or on the extreme end of terror. It was truly almost unimaginable.

For a couple of hours this went on. As the balloon began to come down, it seemed like this whole event would very likely have an awful end. The boy avoided higher altitudes only to be smashed to earth or entangled in a stand of trees or smashed on a structure. But, amazingly, the balloon came to a relatively gentle landing in the midst of an afternoon of high winds.

And then - he wasn't there. There was no one in the balloon.

This really affected me for a few hours after the balloon came down. And I started to wonder why.

Two things came to mind.

The first thing was the gripping thought and image of a boy flying around in that balloon. And I realized that the image is an image of the ultimate loss of control.

As it was flying along, I thought (as I'm sure we all thought), "what can possibly be done to get that boy down safely?" Shoot it down? Of course not. Puncture a hole in it? Too big of a chance of the mylar ripping and the balloon coming down like a rock. Try and capture it? How? The winds were too high, and the movement of the balloon too unpredictable.

There was nothing to be done. It just had to play out.

And that was the hook. The balloon was COMPLETELY out of control. There was literally nothing to be done except to watch. And hope and pray for the best.

So those of us who were watching it were watching a playing out of a complete loss of control.

In this context, the incident is a striking image.

Then, the balloon came down. And I realized that either the boy was dead, or there was no one in it after all. And lo and behold, there was no one in it.

And that brought up the second thing that hit me about this. Here I was, gripped in this story and this image for a couple of hours, and it wasn't at all what I thought it was. There was no boy in danger. There was no unimaginable experience going on there. It was just a mylar balloon in the wind.

And here's what struck me. It made me angry that I had essentially been fooled into thinking that a poor little boy was in that balloon (as it has made many angry, and led to all the attacks and publicity around this). I thought reality was a certain way, and when the balloon came down, I felt manipulated. That boy was supposedly in a box in an attic all the time.

To me, this is important that I recognize this reaction in myself. I felt betrayed and angry.

But what I need to realize is that this is not typical of the world. I could have taken that strong feeling of betrayal and held that against the world: "The world lied to me, the world is not what it appears to be." But I know this is an anomaly.I'm not going to generalize that to the world.

I'm not interested in persecuting this family and this boy because of how it made me feel. I'm truly glad that the boy is all right.

What's phenomenal is to see how events like these affect people, including myself.

Update: October 22, 2009

Nice addition to the post - thanks Guy for posting this :)

Comments

[Scott Brown]

Thanks for commenting, Jen. It's ironic that, while the dad was likely thinking this would garner a lot of publicity, the end result may actually end up tearing apart the family.

The other thing that sticks in my head (and that others have mentioned) is the little boy getting sick two separate times when asked about his comment about "the show". The body knows when there is something up in the psyche!

[Jen]

I'm so glad you shared this. I experienced a lot of the same feelings. I also lost 2 hours worth of billable time that afternoon as I sat, fixated, on this live video of a ballon hurdling through the sky. I was sick with worry for the well being of this little boy. When it landed and nobody was in it I felt a new sense of dread - surely he had fallen out somewhere along the way. And then, he was hiding in the attic?!? Immense relief that he was safe, but the skeptics had already started - and it turns out they were right. I felt angry and embarrassed that I was naive enough to buy this story, but now I'm angry for what this little boy has been put through and will continue to suffer through. He and his brothers now face a real possibility of being removed from thier home, their parents and their lives as they knew them. The parents' greed is absolutely disgusting. Can you imagine being forever remembered for something you did when you were six? At the urging of your parents, no less? Hope it was worth it.