I spend the majority of my time inside my brain. It’s my working office. Thinking. Plotting. Scheming. In my brain I keep my shoes on all the time and leave the toilet seat up when I hit the can. There’s room for my green recliner with the ass groove, a small fridge, my Fender Telecaster with Cyber Twin amplifier, my three-legged bookcase that once belonged to Pierre Trudeau’s neighbour, “Marvellous Wayne” Tubsoch, my Boomtown Rats records, and even the tiny herd of those freakishly small miniature ponies. Inside my brain nothing grows, hopefully, so nothing ever needs trimming. Most of the time my brain travels with me wherever I go; there is no need for any kind of wireless technology. My internet is not on a stick. My internet is a complicated mess of neurons and strands of grey matter that’s fairly dependable considering the haphazard wiring. No monthly fees.
There’s a heavy steel door designed to withstand a million megaton nuclear blast. Or just a good old fashioned carpet bombing. Perfectly balanced, the door pivots smoothly with a delicate touch of a single digit. Most of the time it’s kept slightly ajar, just for airflow. Sometimes I’ll close it when people try to sell me heavily discounted natural gas, or some type of quasi-religion literature.
Yeah. I had an idea recently while cruising home from work. I was somewhere between the plastic A&W bottle filled with a suspicious urine-coloured liquid, which I can only assume is urine and the single black shoe straddling the ditch along Highway 17. Somewhere around Bonfield my idea really began to take some serious shape. Most of my ideas stall out in that nebulous stage between genesis and abandonment. But, hell, I don’t mind admitting that this idea was actually pretty smart. Pure genius.
So, on Saturday I cut the nylon tether that held my homemade balloon to the back deck. The massive craft was constructed from empty milk bags and nine miles of rubber tubing. I spray painted it yellow. It resembles a banana. I built it over the course of 48 frantic but very productive hours, choosing to power the thing with a lethal mixture of methane and children’s tears. The methane came from me, while the children’s tears I bought from some weird guy who was selling the stuff by the imperial gallon. It was actually a good deal. Marvin from Valencia, California, also threw in three signed pictures of David Hasselhoff and an issue of Playboy from 1964. The whole package cost me six dollars plus some overnight shipping that really didn’t amount to any considerable sum. I paid through Paypal.
After freeing my balloon banana thing I waited a few seconds to make sure it would actually get off the ground. Like providence, a nice easterly wind picked up and got in real good under my ship craft balloon banana thingy. At first, the lift generated by the wind seemed unimpressive, but after the thing bobbed around a bit, it got some serious height and off it went. Genius. I phoned it in:
911: “Hospital, police or fire department?”
“What? Oh, uh, none of the above.”
“What is the nature of your emergency?”
“My son, Shannon. He’s really done it now.”
“Has he fallen down a well, sir?”
“What? No. It’s much worse. He’s taken off in a banana balloon. It’s a terrible thing. Terrible.”
“Sir, you do know it’s a crime to phone in a hoax to 911.”
“This is not a hoax, and I am appalled that you would suggest that I would even conceive of something so low.”
“How old is your son, sir?”
“Six. No wait, three. Yeah, he’s three.”
“Sir, is your son three or six?”
“Five. He’s five and full of mischief. Like that Dennis the menace punk kid. Boy, Shannon’s really done it now. “
“So he’s five?”
“Yeah, or something like that. Look, what’s with all the questions? What are you getting at? I’m not the criminal here and -"
“Sir, calm down.”
“...and while you’re sitting there in your ivory tower interrogating me and making all these outlandish claims, my son’s hovering over the Laurentian Mountains. Oh no! I can see him going higher and higher. Oh the humanity! Wait, now he’s crossed over the Ottawa River! Oh no! He’s in Quebec! Oh my beautiful, beautiful banana balloon boy. He’ll never survive in Quebec. They’ll eat him alive. He’s doing terrible in his French class. He can’t conjugate! Are you getting this? My son can’t conjugate! Oh the humanity!”
“Sir, we have police coming to your location.”
“Police? No, maybe the cops shouldn’t come. I mean, what can they do? Use that radar thing on him? No, I mean, well maybe you should call some helicopters or something. The cops can do no good. We need helicopters and maybe a few of those Canadian Fighter Jets. Does Canada have any of those left from the forties? Quick. My two-month-old baby boy is flying away on a terrible updraft.”
“Sir, I thought you said your son was five.”
“Yeah, five. Right. Time seems to fly by when your kid’s riding some kind of slip stream off into a strange, distant country.”
“Quebec is part of Canada.”
“That’s right. Je me souviens. I forgot.”
“Sir, stay on the line and the police will be there shortly.”
“Okay. Good. I have to call someone at Baytoday. Someone from the Nugget. Call the Mattawa Recorder and maybe someone from Autotrader or something. Some type of press conference. Is MCTV still on the air? Maybe Anthony Rota can help me get my banana balloon boy back.”
Click
This was going splendidly. I smiled and poured myself some refreshing soda while scratching my ass. Like shooting fish in the face, or however that saying goes. This was all just too easy. Instant fame. Reality show. Money. A new book. My own publicist who will make me eat at some sushi house. I hate sushi. I burst in to wake Shannon up. It’s hard to wake up a gangly thirteen-year-old from a solid mid-afternoon slumber. That kid can sleep round the clock.
“Shannon, wake up. You gotta hide in the attic.”
“Huh?”
“Hurry. No time to get dressed. You’re fine in your underwear. Hustle boy! Get up into the attic and don’t come down until I come get you.”
He rolled on to his back and opened one eye. “Dad, we don’t have an attic.”
“Shit. I could have sworn we had an attic. Did we ever have an attic?”
“Uh-uh.”
“What kind of stupid house has no attic? Stupid no-attic house!”
“I’m going back to sleep.” He disappeared under his heavy comforter.
“I got it. Get up and go hide downstairs.”
“Okay. I’ll be on the Wii.”
“Sure, Wii. What the hell. Just, stay down there and don’t come up for any reason.”
Shannon threw on his Snoop Dogg track suit.
“C’mon. Get a move on.”
“Is this another scheme?”
The doorbell rang.
“Police! Open up.”
“Hurry! I’ll buy us some time while you crawl on the floor so they can’t see you. Now, hurry.”
The dogs exploded into a fit of barks and nail scratching around the bottom of the door. I muzzled them before opening up. Two cops.
“Oh thank God, you’re here. Has anyone phoned the people that have helicopters? What about NASA or the Coast Guard. My daughter’s floating around Quebec.”
The smaller of the two officers shook his head. “I thought it was a boy aged anywhere between three months and six-years old. Now, it’s a daughter? Is she with your son?”
“What? Sure, yeah, what the hell. This is a terrible ordeal and, it’s just crushed the spirit out of my wife and me. I don’t think the public realizes the torment this has caused. Oh, the humanity. I feel like openly weeping in a dramatic fashion just for a few moments, but I think I’ll wait till someone from the media comes out. Oh, that reminds me - has anyone phoned John R Hunt? Dave Dale? Kate Adams? I think they should know about the terrible small town drama that’s playing out in real time for everyone to watch. I swear, this is like some type of horribly entertaining reality show.”
Then, like out of some Oscar Wilde play, Shannon casually walked upstairs grumbling.
“Hey dad, the Wii’s crapped out. I’m going back to bed.”
Damn. The jigs up. I jumped back in surprise. “Shannon! My son! You’re alive. Oh, we were so scared that you had flown away in that big banana balloon thing. I thought for sure you were hovering over Quebec.” I hugged the hell out of him. He fought me off with his long, lurchy arms. I eased my embrace allowing him to push away some.
“What?” He looked at the cops. “Oh, yeah, uh, I landed whatever that thing was after being shot down by the poutine stand and everything’s good now. I’m going to take a nap.”
The police officer stared me down before saying: “He looks a little older than four.”
“I know. I think he gets it from his mother’s side. They’re, uh, all gigantic folks.”
I began to sweat. Maybe this was not a great idea. At the same time my wife pulled into the driveway. I’m not getting my own reality show. My brain really let me down on this one.
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