Learning Opportunities

How mortifying would it be to be the mother of Falcon, the balloon boy? That right there is MY worst nightmare. A kid's prank gone horribly public on a slow news day?
Falcon absolutely should have gone MIA when Ms. Snowe decided to take her day in the spotlight last week. But, no, the only thing that happened yesterday was a presidential visit to New Orleans, which the whole country has forgotten about anyway, and so was riveted to CNN footage of a giant mylar balloon drifting across the countryside with a kid or not in it.
We happened to be at a layover in Dallas when we first espied the Identified Flying Object on CNN. The kids heard the story, and of course, I told them that the young boy had failed to follow his parents' instructions about NOT TOUCHING THE BALLOON, and had touched it anyway, and now had the police, the Air Force, and every other government agency in the country looking for him and how he was going to be in big, Big, BIG trouble when they found him.
Thankfully, God decided not to call my bluff, and the kid was found alive in a box in his garage. Otherwise of course, I would have had to say the kid was following directions and that some one bad had taken him out of the front yard, which would undo the months of coaching my kids to the out of doors to play.
Of course, I put myself in these parents' positions. But only relatively, because this family is freakish from the get-go. Who keeps a mini UFO in the backyard and goes on Wife Swap anyway? Which of those is stranger? But, I can imagine freaking out over my missing kid, imagining the silver poof whisking him into the lower atmosphere, calling everyone short of the Marines, and demanding his return. S would do this to me. And laugh his ass off, too.
As I was trapped in my own silver aircraft yesterday, after hour long delays, and cramped conditions and a total S meltdown over the inflight beverage service, I was kind of thinking about sneaking off into a refrigerator box for a day or two. Happily, no one would call in the Feds or the Marines. They'd turn on the TV and wait for me to come on in. Unless some one needed a snack or clean underwear, or their homework, or a shoe tied, or ....
In any event, it was gratifying to hear S and E keep asking me questions about the "boy who didn't follow instructions." This woman next to me was laughing when I said that President Obama would be very unhappy that his advisers had to interrupt his trip to tell him there was an interstate incident going on because of this one naughty little boy. I said that the President knows when something like this goes on live TV, and that he would be very very angry. Both boys got very serious. Obama would know? Yes, he would. And don't ever forget it.