The balloon in the Building Society

When you have a small child and you take them into town, two things often happen. The first is that small children don't like walking round town. They get bored and pretty much stop. So you have to carry them. When this particular one was six months old I remember thinking "He's getting heavy. I won't be able to carry him much longer." And when he was six years old, I laughed about that because I was still carrying him. This story happened somewhere between those two ages.

The second thing that often happens is that shops give away helium balloons. The child carries the balloon for the rest of the day, advertising a carpet shop or mortgage broker - kids' favourite things. Small children are easily upset at losing things but bad at holding on to them, so you have to tie the balloon to their wrist. I think they like having an attachment.

Both of those things happened, and I was walking around town carrying a small child with a balloon tied to him. I had to go into a Building Society for some reason. I think the US equivalent is Savings and Loan. It's like a bank, but not quite. This particular one had a counter like a bank, and it wasn't busy, so I walked straight up to the counter and spoke to the woman there about... whatever it was, I can't remember. The counter was just right to sit a small child on, particularly if you have tired arms from a lot of carrying, so I put him down.

Most places that deal with money have a screen to prevent robberies, but this place didn't. There was nothing between me and the woman behind the counter. Unusual, but I didn't take much notice. Specifically, I didn't notice the wires. They ran from the counter up to the ceiling. I was getting on with... whatever it was, when I heard another person behind the counter say "Mind the balloon. It's getting very close to the..."

I guess the last word would have been "wires", but I never heard it. The balloon touched a wire and a security screen shot out of the counter and up to the ceiling. It was quite dramatic. But apart from the surprise, nothing bad happened. Behind the screen I could hear the person in charge checking that everyone was ok. She sounded cross. She pressed a button, the screen came back down, and she was still cross. I pointed out that I didn't know that was going to happen, which didn't help. She *didn't* ask "Is your kid ok?"

They have a glass screen now.

#balloon

#security

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