In Which Pascal Delivers an Important Message

I have been making Christmas cards. One of my biggest struggles with the Christmas card is what message to put on the front. Titles are not my strong point. (I know, I don't have to tell you that.) Anyway, I procrastinated the making of the CCs for a long time, because I couldn't come up with a catchy message. Finally, I reached the point of no return--I must either come up with some words or head over to Target and spend thirty bucks on premade cards. My frugality won out.

As I was feeling slightly Frenchy that day, I chose a message en Francais. If you receive a card from me, you'll see it soon. If you don't, the message says "joyeux noel." Daltonboy's first comment, when he saw the prototype, was, "But we're not French." Some people just can't think outside the box.

Anyway, that made me feel a little self conscious, given my poor history with titles, slogans, and the like, but I decided to stand my ground. After all, I am a direct descendant of Charlemagne, and you don't get more French than that. I am entitled to use French whenever I want, thank you very much.

Sunday afternoon, I received my confirmation, in the church parking lot, no less. The story you are about to read is absolutely true--no exaggeration, no fantasy, no drugs. No kidding.


As we were walking to our car, I noticed a red helium balloon floating up into the sky at the edge of the parking lot. Because I'm witty this way, I pointed and shouted, "Ballon! Ballon!" Everyone else in my family looked at the red balloon. We watched it slowly rise to about twenty-five or thirty feet in the air. DB called out to the balloon to quick fly away before mean boys came and threw rocks at it.

It hovered, uncertainly, in the same spot for several seconds. Because I am committed to absolute veracity in the retelling of this story, I should say that the balloon may not have actually been uncertain. It wavered in the air, which, to me, made it appear to be uncertain. If a balloon were cognizant.

Then a small boy appeared, wearing, I kid you not, a turtleneck sweater (disappointingly, it was not gray, but blue). He ran to where the balloon was hovering, held up his hands, and the balloon floated down to him. He caught the balloon by the string and skipped away.

We stood there, stunned. Daltonboy summed it up for all of us when he said, "No. Way."

We got in the car and drove away in reverent silence. Okay, that was an exaggeration. We got in the car and drove away listening to DB hypothesize about how you could make a remote control balloon. It was then that I knew with every fiber of my being that I had done the right thing with my Christmas cards. Pascal had spoken to me in his own way which, you recall, never was all that garrulous. "Joyeux Noel to you, too," is what I heard.

As we rounded the corner, the boy was sitting on the balloon, trying to pop it.