Up! Up! and...

Going on a balloon ride may seem like a relaxing and even fun idea when taken at face value, but as my good friend Benny found out recently, such activity does not always go as planned.

“He’ll be totally fine! We’ll just let him float a little ways up, and then pull him right back down”, Tony said gesturing towards the fishing line he was haphazardly tying through a hole in the bottom of the UPS box.
“I don’t know about that man… he’s always been a bit of a wimp.”, Rob quipped in while downing his seventh shot of Jack Daniels in the past hour. I stumbled towards the two of them, barely able to stay upright in my own state of inebriation, somehow managing to force semi-coherent words out of my mouth “You know… it seems like it might rain a little…” Tony and Rob's grunts of disagreement were quickly drowned out by the sound of thunder.

Sighing and turning to Benny, I put a hand on his back and asked, “You ready to fly?” He replied with what to all of us seemed like a look of stoic courage and determination and we immediately released the box, with all twelve balloons securely attached, and watched it, with Benny sitting inside rise gracefully into the stormy sky when suddenly a large flash of lightening crashed through the heavens, and we lost sight of our friend and his shoddily constructed aircraft.

Just then the three of us heard the sound of the screen door to the back yard sliding open, and turned to see my mother standing with a look of mild concern on her face. Gesturing towards me she asked “Hey honey, have you seen the cat anywhere?”.