Inflatable Animal Husbandry

Just got back from working at the Halloween Carnival for Texas Hearing And Service Dogs.

It was a blast and a huge success. We were planning about 100 people to show up. The final tallies aren't in, but it was closer to 500.

As soon as I got there, I ran into my sister's family just leaving. Her kids were all dressed in their Halloween regalia, a knight and leopard. You couldn't get more cuteness piled into them without two men and a large dog. They were tired, and I heard the story about their fun from my 4-year-old nephew.

I bid them adieu, went up to my volunteer coordinator and she escorted me to the balloon animals table. Mind you, I have never made a balloon animal in my life, but have never been one to shy away from a challenge, plus there was a line at the table about 20 kids deep, so I took the job.

Armed with a pile of empty balloons, an air pump and two books on the subject, my first two attempts at balloon animals (a dog and a cat) kinda looked like what the animals were supposed to look like, provided they came from a genetic testing lab next to a leaking nuclear plant. The parents were great and patient, so I trudged on. There wasn't really time to follow the books. The kids were waiting patiently, but as I was working on this flower for the longest time, the parents were starting to get twitchy, so I looked at one diagram and put the book away. From here, I decided to myself, I'm going to make it up as I went.

Within an hour I was whipping out bunnies, swords, flowers, dogs, and swans like a professional clown on crack. We were a hit. And then tragedy struck.

We ran out of balloons.

The carnival was going on until 6, we were one of the biggest hits there, and we were out of balloons by 3. I went up to the head of the organization and volunteered to take the trek to Party Pig in Austin to get some more. Did I mention that was about 30 min away from the festival?

That wasn't the worst part. This is 4 days before Halloween, and the Party Pig was PACKED. I'm talking about a line for checkout that snaked around the front, down aisle 1, and across the back of the store. I waited about 45 minutes in line, constantly reminding myself that this was for a great cause; as well as the happy faces of the kids when I handed them their inflated giraffe that appeared to be injured in an industrial accident.

30 minutes back to the carnival. We were back in business.

Luckily, these were almost all kids under 10, so it was easy to steer them towards the easier ones. Swords were a popular choice, so were dogs. When one kid was undecided, I made something easy for another, knowing full well that they'd point at it and say, "Mommy, I want one of THOSE."

I was starting to understand how toy companies make a bundle. They get one kid to get gaga over a toy, and next thing you know all their friends are begging and pleading with their parents for the same thing. Preadolescent drug pushers.

There are still the smartass kids though. I had one towards the end of the day.
"Hi! What can I make for you?"
"A butterfly!" he said, with all the enthusiasm that any kid has when he knows that he one-upped an adult.
"Errr..." I flipped through the book. Nothing. I ran through a couple of ideas in my head on how to pull it off, and came up with nothing that'd look even close.
"Sorry, we don't know how to make one of those," I said. "Anything else you'd like?"
"A ladybug!"
"..."
I actually had a decent idea this time that might worked. I tried it and it looked almost like one, if you closed your eyes and imagined one without actually looking at it. In actuality it looked like a giant inflatable Christmas ornament. Maybe if I drew dots on it I could pull it off. Yeah! The girl working the table with me heard my plight and ran off to grab a marker, which she found fairly quick. I drew one dot on it without incident. The gods of comic irony then decided it was time for action, and during the second dot half the "ladybug" exploded in my hand, sending the marker careening about 10 feet. The kid was now looking a little relieved, I'm assuming because he saw the work in progress and wasn't too happy with it.
He then asked for a scorpion. At this point I wasn't going to let inflated rubber tubes get the better of me. I made one that looked kinda cool, and the little boy skipped off happy, before I saw him trying to feed my masterpiece to a dog. Oh well.

Then it was over. all the kids were gone, the organization made over four times more than they had planned, I learned a new skill, and we all went out for beers and burgers after before going on our merry ways, tired and beat.

It was a good day.