It’s Thanksgiving morning, and you’re sitting there in your pj’s looking at Black Friday ads while drinking your warm beverage of choice. Parade time, and of course, you have to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Cool floats with celebrities, at least a few Disney personalities and musicians performing. Broadway shows do their thing (one of my favorite parts).
The balloons though? To me they are probably the coolest. Did you know that they bring Macy’s employees from all over the country in to control the gigantic monsters? Sometimes nearly 100 people control one single balloon. All choreographed to move in certain motions so that characters dance, spin around, and not plow into buildings. It’s all really facinating when you think about it.
So what happens when Jill from Poughkeepsie decides to trip over her chucks and faceplant? Other people holding the balloon trip over her, sending Big Bird into a dangerous tail spin. Arms aren’t moving in any normal manner, the lines are tangled. His head, his body, legs all moving in varying directions. Everyone pulling in different ways just to try to right the behemeth character, only semi successful to keep him from flying off into the sky or popping on a side of a sky scraper.
I sort of know how that balloon feels. I feel like my heart, head, gut, soul, are all moving in some sort of weird unchoreographed abnormal fashion. I try to stay upright and going but it gets so hard sometimes. Rationality, past experiences, how my heart feels and my head feels, logic all forces pulling me all sorts of ways. Then the people closest to me holding the strings, try as they might to right me have the hardest time. It’s not a fight, it’s not me fighting, it’s just hard getting all of my parts moving in one fluid motion.
The biggest danger to the balloon? The wind. If the winds are strong enough, they don’t even let the balloons fly in the parade. The helium is taken out and millions of children pissed that they can’t see a 100 ft. high Dora the Explorer. And the people holding the strings on a breezy day? Occasionally dragged like ragdolls across the pavement just trying to keep precious Kermit the Frog from taking out a small family of 4 from Whitey McWhitebreadville.
As I navigate my way down this breezy street, I only hope that no one trips on their shoes and plows me into a building.
