I hate balloons. They're bright and fun, and you pick out a color you want, and they fill it up and tie a string on it and hand it to you.

And then begins the downward spiral of stress and inevitable decay. They're an allegory for life, really - as soon as you get one, you barely have time to appreciate the vibrancy before you have to start planning and worrying. What if it slips out of your hand? It'll float away, and you'll only have a hope of recovering it if you're indoors (and it better not be a high ceiling). If you're outdoors when it happens? Nope nope nope. Just stare at it sadly as it floats away, a reminder of the happiness you will never ever feel again. To avoid this lesson in loss, better tie the string to your wrist so this doesn't happen.

Now you can start glancing at it every two seconds to make sure it's still there. You feel the constant upwards tug on your wrist, but if it comes loose you want to know immediately... even though it would still happen too fast for you to do anything about it. So it's there, bobbing around like a buoy of anxiety. And now it's time to go home from this celebration of mortality ("birthday party") or wherever you got this reminder of mortality ("balloon"), so off you go into the car. And, of course, it's big and bright and floaty and it's blocking the driver's mirrors. That little splash of color is bothering people, can't you see? Bury that joy where no one can see it.

You made it home! Now you can wonder what in the world you're supposed to do with it, because they're inherently pointless. The best you can hope for is to tuck it out of the way somewhere and let it merely exist for a while. If you keep it away from heat sources and pointy objects that are liable to make it EXPLODE WITH A HORRIBLE BANG AND SCARE THE HELL OUT OF EVERYONE, maybe you'll get some fun out of it when it's partially-deflated and just neutrally buoyant, bouncing it around in little games and hoping that you don't get shouted at for playing ball in the house.

No matter what you do, though, the very best you can hope for is a shriveled, wrinkled heap that accomplishes nothing other than looking unattractive and making people wonder what it's still doing around.

And then you throw it away and no one will ever remember that it existed.

Life.

Oh, and sandboxes are dirty, and bounce houses have too many flailing kids knocking into you and then the bounce house deflates while you're still in it and you have to crawl to safety, and I don't know how to have fun with Legos.