That Other Latex Allergy

When I signed up for Circus Skills, I must have been nearing graduation from my own personal wine-tasting class.  Yes.  It was a Tuesday.  I almost remember it well.

Had I been fully focused on what this class might entail, I may have remembered my morbidly unnatural aversion to balloons.

Or - maybe not so unnatural.

One early memory that's burned into my brain (among other places) is the first time I was forced to sit on a balloon.

Yes.  You read that right.  Child abuse.

It was all the rage at birthday parties in the sixties to play a game that required each child to sit on a balloon containing a secret message until it popped.

It was also a federal law that female children under the age of 25 wear dresses or skirts.  Underpants optional, although I made that one up as a toddler the day I led the Church of Christ children out of the basement after Sunday School.  I was too young to ascend steps without employing all four limbs, and it was painfully apparent to all that I had dressed myself.

So the first time I played the kill-or-be-killed balloon game, I was the last kid to free the tiny piece of paper.  The moms wouldn't let the birthday girl or her guests continue with party 'fun' until I had completed this task.  Those women had leery, pointed faces, with sharp cat-eye glasses and red lipstick globbed on their cigarettes and teeth.

I may have filled in a few of the fuzzier details from the original trauma.

I know for a fact that my mother Pearl wasn't there because she would never have egged me on like that.  She would have joined me on the floor, popped the stupid balloon, given me the dumb message, and life would not have ground to a halt.  (She was that way with spiders, too.  Very decisive:  Walk into the screaming room, smash the whatever, walk out.  We were all - including Dad - extremely grateful.)

The balloon was worse than those impossible-to-extinguish birthday candles.  It mocked me in my attempts to make it burst, and those pointy parents wouldn't let me use my teeth or the dog's nails or a knife.  I would gladly have eaten rat poison instead.

As an adult, I summoned bravery by channeling my Inner Pearl on my daughter Abi's birthday so she could have balloons.

Poor Abi.  She'd get so excited about the swimming pool we must have gotten her because every year I ran into the house completely drenched.  Then she'd see the balloons chasing me through the living room and realize I was dripping with sweat.

There was no pool - again - just a totally exhausted, chicken-hearted mom who had driven five entire blocks from Party Warehouse with 47 of the damn things trying to commandeer the vehicle.

I still can't sit down if there is helium anywhere in the house.

(Bonus Confession:  Balloons are the real reason I only have one child.  Since it could not be guaranteed that he or she would arrive ON Abi's actual birthday - that younger brother or sister was completely out of the question.)

When I arrived at the Circus Skills class, I remembered the obvious connection to balloons and got real sad.  This unexpected emotion delighted the teacher, who confided that she needed more 'downer' clowns.  The fakers with the super-sunny dispositions got on her nerves, even though she herself fit into that category.  Maybe it was a turf issue.

I did not confess my pathological fear of balloons, because an even bigger fear was that she'd whip one out of her clown overalls to desensitize me.  Then I'd turn into a Killer Clown, which she might also have loved - provided I killed one of the other sunny dispositions in the room.

Wait.  What did I expect might happen in this class that did not involve balloons?  Elephant tricks?  Lion taming?  I can teach my dog Lola to drive a little Shriner car in the privacy of my balloon-free home.

My classmates and I practiced making each other laugh using nothing but facial expressions.  This made me want to cry, which naturally cracked everybody up.  I was good.  Confused, yes.  But - real good.

Our teacher talked about finding our Clown Voice.  She said it takes a long time and that when she found hers she started seeing a voice coach to protect her vocal cords.  Her Clown Voice turned out to be very high and squeaky.  She let us hear from her Clown and she was right.  My own vocal cords covered their ears.

Thanks to inevitable balloon involvement, I'm scratching the 'circus' option off my Post-retirement Hobby List - but maybe my Clown Voice will show up anyway.  If it's painfully high and squeaky, I might return it.  Send me a better voice, I'll bark at my Inner Clown, or I'll swallow a balloon.

Perhaps I'll go easy on the ultimatums.  My Inner Clown might have pointy glasses and red lipstick and love nothing more than to watch me do that very thing.

Circus Skills had another activity called, "What Are You Doing?"  The participants acted out whatever their partners told them to do, which also made me sad.  This was the game I practically invented in my youth.

I know now that those childhood balloon land mines were planted by mothers who had more frustration than imagination - and it showed in the secret messages so painfully retrieved:

Do as you're told.

Don't talk back.

Wear clean underwear.

These bits of advice from women who were destined to divorce half their husbands a decade later and burn their bras in protest of the secret messages they'd gotten as young girls.

Maybe we're each born with our own personal circus skills.  We swallow swords, walk blindfolded on tightropes, and fly through the air - praying the person we're headed for on the other trapeze never lets go.

But if we're ever able to tune out the constant din of the audience, the animals, and the other performers, a totally new voice may speak up.

Pity the spiders.  It just means we've finally gotten brave.

(Do I smell next Friday already?  Yup.  And it's covered with barbeque sauce.  Bring your favorite bib!)