The Dangers of Balloons

Water balloons should be illegal. They rank right next to my proposed law saying that no Silly Putty should ever be brought into a home that has both carpeting and boys.

And kids should go to school after two weeks of Christmas break, regardless of snow, sleet, hail, ice and frigid temperatures. Seriously. If the postal service is delivering mail in their little buggies, then those heavy buses should be running! Spend a few thousand bucks equipping the yellow beasts with seat belts and quit being sissies about calling school off at the drop of a flake.

Don't chastise me and tell me they cancelled school in the interest of keeping kids safe from a weather-related accident. I'm here to tell you, my kids may not be safe at home after today's water balloon-related accident.

They're bored. Bored children are dangerous children. They turn into a mixture of MacGyver and Rambo. Bad things happen.

I even had the blow-up latex contraband appropriately stashed away. In a room that my kids aren't even allowed to enter.

Moreover, said children were supposed to be in their respective rooms having a "quiet time" while I talked on the phone with Bruce, planning a summer trip to Germany to visit my mom.

Oh, they were having a quiet time, all right. Too quiet.

I should have sensed something.

But after hanging up the phone, I got online to research what I needed to do to renew the kids' passports.

And that's when the oldest perpetrator came downstairs and asked if they could be done with their quiet time. I asked if they could all get along together nicely. He said yes and so I agreed that quiet time could cease. I told him to go back upstairs and tell his young accomplices.

And as he walked by the kitchen, he said, "Uh, Mom. I think we have a leak."

What? What leak? I hadn't yet run the dishwasher today.

I walked to the kitchen and noticed that the lamp over the table was dripping water, looking more like a fountain in the park than a light fixture ought to look. The table was holding puddles.

Surprisingly, all three children were behind me at that moment. Even though Clay never made it upstairs to tell Spencer and Allison that their incarceration was over.

"What have you all done?" I asked, and then I ran up the stairs to the bathroom on the floor above the kitchen.

Hmmm. No obvious flooding on the floor. No water filling the bathtub to overflowing. No clogged toilet had been continuously flushed past capacity. In fact, the only evidence of wrongdoing was that the hand towel was lying on the floor, next to a few drops of water; but the towel was only slightly damp.

"What have you done?" I repeated. But a lot louder this second time.

And so the story gushed forth from the mouths of my babes.

Spencer went into the room that has been deemed off limits. He found the water balloons that were left over from Clay's birthday party last summer. And then he and Clay proceeded to fill the water balloons. With water, naturally.

Allison, the best tattle tale we've got, strictly blew air into the balloons. No water. Not her. No way. But she didn't blow any hot air in my direction informing me of her brothers' misdeeds either. I still am not sure what possessed her to pass up that opportunity.

But still. Where was all that water in the kitchen coming from?

I opened the cabinet under the bathroom vanity.

My memory fades a bit here. I think it's a coping mechanism in order for me to maintain some small measure of psychiatric health.

I do know that I was mad enough to tell the kids to get to their rooms promptly because there was no way I was fit to even spank them at that moment. I spent several minutes venting while soaking and then wringing out the hand towel.

The kids are still in their rooms. Waiting for Bruce's arrival home. Because they are more afraid of daddy spankings than mommy spankings. And because, after all, the wait is worse than the actual spanking. Usually. Exceptions might be made tonight.

Still, I feel a little bad for them. Truly, they had no idea what was actually going on.

No-no's were violated. We have a strict rule against water play inside the house. And the boys will be spanked for disregarding that rule.

But they didn't even see the water accumulating under the sink. Clay fitted the balloon over the lip of the spigot but, all I can figure is, the water back sprayed up into the faucet and then dripped on the outside of the pipes under the sink onto the bottom of the area underneath where you store all your extra toilet paper. If they'd seen in, I'm certain they would have stopped.

Well, I'm not 100 percent certain. Because they're boys. And water play is fun.

I'm maybe 70 percent sure they'd have stopped.

Alas, while all our Christmas decorations are no longer decking our walls, we now have two rather large water spots decorating our kitchen ceiling.




They aren't very festive, are they? And they aren't even symmetrical. Lovely.

On a positive note, the light does actually still work.

Meanwhile, the local school system continues to toy with me. Tomorrow, school is starting on a two-hour delay.