Dollar Tree Balloons

Dollar Tree Balloons

My roomie and I recently went to the Douglasville, Georgia Dollar Tree. I needed razors and shaving cream. I settled for a few cheap bags of double-bladers and some raspberry foam—both of which are terribly nasty but cheap, and they will get me to my next pay day (my room-mate picked up the tab).

Of course, it is February, and so, at the front of the establishment, there are four rows of Valentine’s Day items. I am still hurting over a break-up, and suddenly, I see myself

Tie on a red RAMBO headband, strip my clothes off, M-60 the shit out of all of the rows of Valentine’s lies running towards the carnage as streamers fall and fireworks explode and go-go zombie hookers gyrate and I start fornicating with the debris of shrapnel and shredded Valentine’s merchandise emerging covered with dripping melting and boiling bubbling chocolate screaming like Wolverine coming out of the vat where they filled him with adamantium…

Ahem…(brushing flowers and chalk hearts off of my shoulders…)…

What really happened was I looked from the Valentine’s display to my right to a balloon stand. Then, I looked up—

There are all of these jettisoned balloons hanging on the ceiling of the Dollar Tree. No, not just like a regular place that sells balloons--not even a Party Central—there are dozens of them.

I started thinking about how they were really trying to escape—some of them were even in a child’s hand at one point and then got set free, right? Some of them untied their own knots? Some of them got away from an employee while he or she was trying to tie them properly to the display? Some of them are just A.I. balloons?

There are:

Get Well Soon

Christmas

Birthday

Easter

Halloween

Just Because

Congratulations

Graduation
Best Wishes

Pregnancy

Marriage

And

Valentines

Balloons up there.

Balloons all stuck in the metal stitchings of the rafters, hovering there over the check-out area.

These balloons were making their escape and got caught by the ceilings.

Still, they were still breathing up there, like strange sad Hallmark card jellyfish, and they were holding their own!

I wonder if they cried out when one of their brethren made it out the door…is that freedom when the child gets out there? Because if the kid lets you go out there, you rise into the infinite abyss—is that freedom? Is that the balloon Valkyrie moment?

Or, did these trapped balloons weep when one of theirs made it out the door just to deflate in a corner of a toddler’s bedroom? Or deflate by a graduation gown? Or get accidentally popped by a pen in a pocket or a nail on a wall?

At night, when the Dollar Tree is shut down, the Valentine’s Day balloons start making love until the Birthday balloons come over. The Get Well Soon balloons hovel with the Christmas and Easter balloons. The Halloween balloons scare the shit out of the Just Because balloons. The Congratulations balloons just jack each other off. The Best Wishes balloons sigh over the Marriage and Pregnancy balloons with disdain. The Graduation balloons stare in abject horror at all of it.

I am going to sneak in there one night and set them all free with my knife.