GOTTA LOVE THOSE KIDS

Yesterday I sat in the living room, working, and caught a news story that was breaking, on TV, about a 6-year-old child who had crawled into the basket of a giant helium balloon that his dad had built in the back yard to be used "to pursue his hobby as a weather chaser," ahem, okay, whatever, and apparently floated off into the far reaches of our atmosphere (at least up to 7000+ feet, anyway).

I have little grandkids, and just the thought of that poor child being swept away from his family home and going for a horrific ride, alone and scared, and possibly poisoned from leaking helium, as the reporters eventually suggested, made my stomach hurt, and I could not stop watching.  While I was working, I was following the flight of that balloon, gasping at the right places and listening to "experts" telling us what horrors the little guy might be experiencing.  

Admittedly, there was a point where I thought, "I bet that kid isn't even in there," and when the balloon floated to the ground about a hundred miles from it's launching pad, I thought, "I bet that kid is at home hiding."  

I was a 6-year-old kid once, and that's what I would have been doing. 

So sure enough, about 3 hours after the glorified California Freeway Car Chase began, it ended on the discovery of the little boy at home.  He came slinking into the kitchen while his shaken father was on the phone. 

I listened to the chatter about the family, bringing their morality and abilities into question, and I heard reporters say that they would have been severely punished for something like that as children, and my thought was this:  They had the ARMY looking for him, for God's sake!  They had dozens and dozens of investigators and law enforcement officials combing that neighborhood. They had dogs and Black Hawk helicopters...and nobody found him.

I don't know about you, but upon the discovery that the kid was hiding in his own attic in a cardboard box and eluded discovery, did not give me any confidence in the people sworn to protect me, what about you?  

Thank God he's okay, though.  Gotta love those kids!