My wife started crying- broke out CRYING when I told her that this little boy had probably fallen out of the balloon. Then an hour later was pretty nonchalant when I told her it was all a hoax\misunderstanding.

I suspect Daddy is behind all this. He wants his own reality show. Just speculating.

Fine- I'm going to bed. I was going to ask Gretchen what perfume she was wearing tonight, but now it's too late.

To me the 'balloon' coverage just had a bizarre quality to it (I know.....it's natural for people to be drawn to the drama). But I half expected the screen flash "Breaking News Alert" to be accompanied by the Fifth Dimension song 'Up Up And Away In My Beautiful Balloon'. It seemed that surreal.

Stupid kid. When they showed the footage of the balloon actually landing, and I saw people next to it, I was surprised at how small the balloon actually was. It didn't seem like it would be sufficient to carry a six-year-old boy. Drag the child yes, but lift it and carry it? I could be wrong, but when you consider how large a balloon has to be to carry a handful of adults, doesn't seem like that balloon could have carried a child very far.

> Then an hour later was pretty
> nonchalant when I told her it
> was all a hoax\misunderstanding

I love stories like that.

Princess Diana was like that. There were all these people in my life who I loved and admired, and they asked if I'd stayed up to watch the funeral on TV. ("Nope!")

At the time I lived a few blocks from the British Consulate on Wilshire. I'll never forget seeing all those bunches of flowers, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, stacked up in that courtyard, all sort of pointing the same way in the stack.

A year later, nobody cared. It wasn't like a close friend had died after all. It was more like the last episode of a popular sitcom. Hitchens wrote an essay asking what was that about?

The feelings we have for people on TV aren't real feelings, even when they're real people.

By the way, those parents should be arrested. On Wolf Blitzer, that kid busted his parents. "You guys said we did this for a show."

They wasted tax payer funds on a rescue mission for a publicity stunt. Assholes.

Oh, and this one's even better.

Poor dad is disgusted and outraged ("appalled") that CNN would ask such a thing. Bastard.

Gregg, listening to the audio of the last video link you posted:

"I'm not an expert on when people are lying, but this guy sounds like he's lying. These people just turned their lives into tabloid soup."

Patrick, I'm sure you meant to say "stupid parents" right?

A six year old boy isn't going to begin to know the ramifications of something like this...but I'm still happier to read that he's alive than not, regardless.

And yes, if this is a no-kidding hoax set up by the parents, there needs to be severe consequences for them, starting with full payment of the emergency services that they incurred.

Amy, you sound like you had a lovely couple of days. I love learning the background about people in history--the stuff that lies beneath the surface. Makes them so much more real.

"The feelings we have for people on TV aren't real feelings, even when they're real people."

Excellent point, Crid. It's not possible for people to truly grieve someone they don't know and have a personal connection to....my initial angst for "balloon boy" was purely an emotional reaction based on the fact that I have a little 6 year old boy too--who actually looks a lot like the kid, strangely enough...

I've never understood the weeping masses over celebrity deaths and such...I can't think of anyone who I admire/respect/am a fan of--but don't know personnally--that would elicit such a response. I think people just like to jump on the grieving bandwagon to make themselves feel more important.

OMG those people are ridiculously bad liars. You'd think that with all of the set-up they'd have rehearsed their stories a bit. But frankly the kids seem a little slow. The 6yr old acts more like a 4yr old.

I think that mom and dad need to do some jail time for this little stunt. And maybe someone should look in on those kids.

BTW dad has a long history of kookery. I was dubious of this story as soon as I learned a little bit about his background.

So I just read that Denver International Airport had to be shut down for a while because of this nonsense. That ups the cost of their little sideshow into the millions. Asshats.

These people are classless morons. Talk about an over-inflated sense of entitlement.

I live in Fort Collins so for local interest reasons I'll be watching this story to see the fallout. Only Thing I can really add is that now we have a new most famous person/family in the town. It used to be a homeless guy named Barney who went from bar to bar at night begging for money to get drinks. Very Surreal for me.

Before they are arrested, before they are billed, before they suffer any other consequences, they should be separated from their props, er, meal tickets, er children. I meant children.

Of course, there's no safe place to put them since orphanages went out of style.

"Patrick, I'm sure you meant to say "stupid parents" right?

A six year old boy isn't going to begin to know the ramifications of something like this..."

Yeah, but he's such a brat. I suppose you're right, though, it's the idiot parents who deserve the blame. I don't care whether it was a deliberate publicity stunt or not - those fools are negligent parents and should pick up the tab for the rescue mission. Then the court should levy punitive damages against them, just to reinforce the message.

I saw part of one of the YouTube clips from that stupid show (Wife Swap, or whatever) they were on, and they are two of the fruitcakiest, hippy-dippy dumbshits imaginable. The kids act like howler monkeys on crack. The guy is a boorish, loudmouthed jerk, and he and his wife both think they are descended from aliens. And get this, they make fun of other parents who they deem "overprotective." Yeah, asswipe, give yourself a big pat on the back, there. At least those other, "overprotective" parents don't lose track of their kids to the tune of what must have been tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

I think the feelings are real, just shallow and temporary. We listen to someone's music or read someone's book and have the illusion of connection. So the grief is real, it's just fleeting.

Actually, I posted "stupid kid" comment before I happened to see the videos I posted. I was actually naive enough to believe the parents' story about how the child accidentally released the balloon, then hid for four hours because he was fearful of his parents' wrath.

Another Heene family production - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBWJXXgaYBo

It might be a good idea to put these kids into custody until the psychological state of the parents can be determined. The littlest one has been puking on television every time he's asked about this incident, suggesting the he may be under a lot of stress. And it's come out that the father sent the brothers onto the roof of their house to video tape the balloon departing. The more that comes out, the more evident it is that this was staged.

Re the Heene family production, linked by Margo ....

Wow, I couldn't watch more than thirty seconds of it. I think I threw up in my mouth a little. And my tubes tied themselves (again), and I am thinking of joining a eugenics movement, just to keep idiots like this from reproducing.

These people are like badly trained dogs, who use negative attention-getting tactics.

> So the grief is real, it's just
> fleeting.

OK, sure... And so is the courage I feel when my favorite racing drivers come roaring through Monaco's Casino Square at a hundred miles per hour (about 20 seconds in). I'm right there with 'em, baby! I'm totally feelin' it, and it's part of my life!....

Unless there's an accident and people get maimed and die or something, and then I'm just a guy watching TV again. Sometimes with my feet up. Sometimes with a glass of cheap wine in my fist.

It just doesn't count. All those people who wept for Diana's funeral were just pretending... Afterwards, they rinsed out their ice cream bowls, set their alarm clocks and went to bed. Their aching was over in a matter of weeks, in the worst case. Her death was the next chapter in the story. In real life, that's not what it's like when someone you love dies.

> It might be a good idea to put
> these kids into custody until the
> psychological state of the parents
> can be determined

Well, they're not raising their kids to be monsters, they're just raising them to be crackpots... No law against that.

Amy's right to make fun of this story as a time-waster. But see photo #3: There was a reason this kid might have been fascinated by inflatables.

Welcome to the club Pirate Jo

These parents horrify me...

Remember, they involved their children in this. They asked their children to participate in a hoax which involved emergency resources (which were put on hold to rescue the boy – an entire airport was even shut down) and then had them LIE about it. This is nothing less than monumentally pathological behavior.

What type of individual can justify this to the point of thinking nothing about how this would impact his children. This goes beyond kooky. Kooky is having séances and Ouija-board parties to invoke the spirit of Robert E Lee. Kooky is kooky. Kooky doesn't involve manipulating your children into holding an entire nation emotionally hostage to gain notoriety and fame.

UGH...disgusting – and this is a form of child abuse. I mean, who would put their kids through something like this?!?!!?

I agree, Feebie. And it was precisely this horrifying behavior on their part that got them famous on TV. But don't blame the networks - the networks are responding to demand in the marketplace. The fact that people want to watch this, and be entertained by it, is in many ways even more horrifying than the behavior of the parents itself. Do I really need to see the uncivilized behavior of complete cretins on TV to feel better about my own place on the food chain? Sheesh, talk about setting the bar low.

They shut down an airport for these assholes? Good lord.

My level of disgust continues -

THEY *USED* THEIR CHILDREN FOR THIS. What type of self-centered assholes do this shit to their kids?

Feebie writes: THEY *USED* THEIR CHILDREN FOR THIS. What type of self-centered assholes do this shit to their kids?

Considering they've got this child so scared that he's throwing up whenever someone talks about this, this is one time when I think your outrage is appropriate. They're abusing this kid.

Amy, regarding Gregg's observation, please tell him hello and I agree.

Amy,

I call it the Attic Boy story on our blog and had about the same initial impression as you. BTW, you made the blog today three times :)

Did you see where Rabbi Tamara Miller was fired for calling the Holocaust Museum shooting an act of racism?

Someone pointed out that since Dad designed the balloon, he should know that it couldn't have risen so quickly with the weight of a six-year-old added on. If it could rise at all.

I think Attic Boys dad is one of those self assured nuts and narcissists who thinks he can talk his way out of anything. I believe he will open his mouth a few times too often in the next few days and hang himself. This was clearly a hoax and the police are on to him.

The dad stupidly released the video of the balloon launching. He and his wife were the one's who'd released it, not the kids. The parents were present. Dad throws a tantrum on camera because his wife forgot to hold onto the tether.

But the most interesting part is that the 'space ship' barely had enough lift to carry it's own weight. It nearly collapsed in on itself in the breeze. And it's made of very thin metallic foil. Any weight inside of the balloon would have conspicuously deformed the shape. There's no way in hell that that thing could have maintained its shape and lifted a forty or fifty pound kid. So the parent knew all along that their son wasn't inside - or at least the father did, the wife doesn't seem too sharp.

And FWIW child protective services has initiated an investigation on the family. I'm not someone who thinks that every little thing needs to involve the authorities, but the father seems like someone who could be dangerous to the children - especially now that he's being humiliated.