Jul 24, 2026
By Alan Noble
The great thing about helium balloons is that even in an age of fantastic gadgets, for most kids it’s still a novelty to play with a balloon. You just don’t get the chance to play with a real helium balloon that often. Maybe you can get one from a birthday party, but that’s about it. This novelty is no small thing, because for a kid, novelty is about the best quality a toy can have. One more Alphabet App on the iPad is probably not going to pique Susie’s interest, but give her this balloon that floats and she’s thrilled. If this is true today, when my kids can use an app and their finger tips to explore the entire Earth with detailed satellite imagery, it was even more true when I was six.
It had all the makings of a perfect evening. For dinner we were going to have Taco Bell. This was a pretty huge deal, because for six-year-old Alan, Taco Bell was a special treat. As if this were not enough, my dad let me come with him in his red Toyota pickup truck to get the food: a collection of bean and cheese and “combo” burritos. When we walked in we saw a tall helium tank and a collection of balloons trailing their ribbons, clinging to the ceiling of Taco Bell. I can’t remember why they were giving out balloons, but they were, and while we waited for our order to come up, my dad took me over and a worker let me have my own helium balloon, and I probably just about died with joy.
The ride home was spent planning what I would do after dinner, how I would use the balloon to imagine some daring adventure with my G.I. Joes. We pulled up to our house and I unbuckled and ran up to the door, anticipating telling my mom the good news about getting a free balloon. And then the balloon was out of my hands and rapidly ascending the dusk sky, hopelessly gone, and yet still fantastic, as if it were going on an adventure into the stratosphere without me. I cried, of course.
My parents must have felt pretty bad for me, because my dad got back in his truck and drove me to the Taco Bell to get a replacement balloon. In a strange way though, I actually felt worse. The ride home from getting another balloon seemed to take forever. The whole time I kept talking to my dad about how much fun I would have with the balloon when we got home, trying to persuade dad and myself that it was worth the drive to replace it. Panicked thinking about how I would have to get out of the truck again and how terrible it would be if I lost the second balloon the same way as the first. But I didn’t.
When we got home, I was desperate to do something amazing with this balloon. I told my mom I wanted to make it a hot air balloon for a G.I. Joe. I asked for a little Dixie Cup to hang under the ribbon to hold an action figure in. I don’t know if I ever got a chance to try this air machine, but I do recall that the entire time I was obsessed with the need to enjoy that balloon like it was a miracle. I had to love it. My busy, tired dad drove all the way back to Taco Bell just to replace the balloon I lost because I was dumb enough to let go of the ribbon.
The thing about balloons is that they are always novel. The other thing about balloons is that they are always novel because they never last very long. They pop, deflate, the helium atoms leak out through the porous latex, or they float away.
Even if I hadn’t lost that first balloon, my night was destined for disappointment, because I had convinced myself there was something magical about it that would really make me happy. This toy was the toy that would change everything. Which sounds silly, I know, but I was about six years old. Whatever real joy the balloon could grant me was lost long before I let it slip through my fingers. It was a let down from the outset, I just didn’t know it. Strangely enough, I’d go on to experience this feeling a million different times. A little while after the balloon incident, I recall begging my mom for one of those plastic army men with a parachute, as if this toy would be the one to live up to my expectations. When I was older, I’d call this feeling “buyer’s remorse,” which helped shift the focus towards my purchasing habits, but really the problem is in my heart. Toys let us down. New toys break on Christmas morning after just a few minutes use. Some toys are broken before they are even purchased. Other toys just aren’t nearly as fun as they were on TV.
And maybe this is a large part of what toys can teach us. These objects are tools of the imagination, created to draw us out of our world and into another. In that way, toys are inherently otherworldly. They entertain us by inviting us to not conceive of our lives as the Only Way things could be. But they also keep our hope in check. They remind us that our world is still very much fallen. Maturing as a kid involves this recognition that the things you cherish in this life will come to an end. But if we get too caught up in this truth, it can suck the joy out of any toy. We can feel so desperate to enjoy it in the face of impending loss that we can’t really enjoy it at all.
If we allowed for some rough generalization, we could divide the adult population into two camps: those who learned to accept and enjoy finitude as a child, and those who didn’t. I didn’t. The good news is that this lesson is always before us. There is no end to the helium balloons that may inspire our imagination and our hope. And if we are careful, these toys can help to form us into even greater neighbors and friends. It begins by being grateful for the novelty of things like helium balloons, a gratitude that knows the balloon will eventually float away.
Image: “Escaped balloon” by Ruth Hartnup/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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