Red Balloon

I wrote this monologue to perform at worship night.

One day I took my foot off the break. I wasn´t even thinking about it... it was almost a twitch that I just followed through with. I don´t have a history of irregular behavior. I don´t even do weird things. I´m abysmally normal - routine, same old life. Even the smells in my life are the same: the acrid burning of a crusty coffee pot, a squirt of my vanilla perfume, a walk by the gutter for a smell of wet trash and soggy diapers. Usually I walk so I smell a lot of gross things (Anywhere humans congregate we tend to pool our filth). But for some reason that day I drove. I have a car... an old Buick, dark green, thousands and thousands of miles. It bears scars of its not-so-gentle interactions with other cars. I tend to rear-end people. It´s like the movie "Crash": however hurtful or damaging, sometimes we become so desperate for human contact that we just have to (CRASH) in to each other. For some reason that doesn´t make me shy. I like to drive and I´m going to! I have no reason to be defensive about that! I mean, I really didn´t do anything... it´s more what I Didn´t do. Yeah, that´s probably a better way to put it: one day I didn´t push the brake (it´s amazing that such a small action could create this much trouble for me. I´m sure there´s some physical equation for the amount of force needed to keep a brake pedal down... and it varies for different vehicles. ANd maybe the amount of force needed changes. So, in all reality, owing to the age and state of repair my car is in, it could all have been a mistake, a misjudgment, an accident.)

I know it wasn´t an accident. But the fact that it could´ve been helps.

It wasn´t a unique day. The sky was white (I hate white skies). I was late to my job as a dental tech. It´s not the kind of job that one can be late for without retribution. Maybe I was avoiding the inevitable backlash of my irresponsibility. It´s not my fault, of course. I burned my hand on the iron first thing. Then I got shampoo in my eye. Then I couldn´t find my Friday scrubs... the ones with the little doggies on them. (I hate those scrubs. I don´t mean dislike. If I could find the half-blind, graphic-design freshman who created that pattern and drag him by his trendy glasses out of Starbucks and throw him in front of a bus, I would. It´s a hateful swirl of pastels picturing brown, floppy-eared dogs. Now there are splotches of reddish-brown. Crusty red splotches.) After that level of stress, it was almost hateful for me to go into public.

I just remembered that I forgot to brush my teeth. I work in a dentist´s office. There are a lot of strange ironies in my life. Like, for example, how my route will have to change forever because I made one little social gesture. Maybe that´s what it was: rebellion against the pointless laws that are created to standardize behavior and have the unfortunate byproduct of conformity and classes. Maybe a big red sign is a familiar object - even to little kids - but I saw it then as a statement, and one I didn´t want to heed. So, I didn´t. What´re the chances that some fit mom running with a double stroller would cross the intersection and be on the receiving end of my gesture? Does anybody else find that strange?

I can´t say it was an accident because maybe there are no accidents. Based on my day, I think it´s safe to say that the white-faced fates glared at me, showing their opinion in no uncertain terms.

Some people get awy with everything- literally! Stealing, lying, cheating, you name it: lives without consequences. Do you know that when I was little my luck was so poor that on my 9th birthday I lost my red balloon, got pushed into the mud in my new shoes, and ran out of cupcakes before my turn? Well, whose turn is it now to be unlucky? Haha.

I saw her. I did. And I didn´t want her red balloon to fly away, I wanted it to (POP). I had to hear it. That´s why I went back. I wanted to commiserate, really... to know that someone else felt the dead weight of loss. When I lost my red balloon, I watched it float away until it was only a red speck. There is something very uniting between humans about being unredeemable. We can´t be saved. None of us. We can´t save what slips through our fingers... like catching water.

I think it´s the little things that set me off the fastest... like that drip. Some fluid was leaking from my car. A leak. I went back for the pop and heard the drip. I can´t imagine that I would be blamed for escaping such a god-awful noise Nobody likes repetitive noises. EVerybody gets annoyed sometimes. I can hardly be blamed. Just a foot. That´s all I actually did; took my foot off the brake.

I do remember some curved metal. It couldn´t glint like metal should becaue of the sunless sky. I hate it for not glinting.

We were near grass and there was a bit of a splash: red on green. Red on green. Like a stoplight. Maybe if there had been a stoplight I would´ve stopped. All red, oen tiny squirmy body lay on the grass but didn´t cry. I kind of hated it for not crying. Maybe if it had drowned out that constant dripping I would´ve been okay, I would´ve stayed.

I don´t remember much then. It was an uneventful drive but I felt all wet. I cleaned myself up; my nose was bleeding. Sometimes I get nosebleeds. I remember in highschool I loved Bobby Brown - a classic cutie. One unfortunate day I rushed to Geometry trying to stop a nosebleed and who should I hit as I speed around the corner? Bobby, of course. And now he thinks I´m gross, no doubt. I hate nosebleeds. I´m hungry for breakfast.

But the blood keeps flowing.

I pull my hand away after touching my nose: red fingers. I look to the mirror and am surprised to see red flashes of light. What´s happening?

Click. Click. I can´t open my door - it´s stuck-... why are my fingers red!?! What? Wh-? Help! My hands!

I can´t hold my balloon!

Commentary:

Sometimes our hate is so toxic that we can only see ourselves as wronged, never wrong. We are too self-absorbed to see the nose on our own face, the reality right next to us. Open your eyes. That reality you´re romanticizing may just be your fault. And all you think you did was lift a foot.