During a volunteer gig I was talking with a friend when he suddenly remarked, “You have to see this on TV. A young boy is in this helium balloon at like 6,000 feet and they are trying to figure out how to get him down.” So I turned on the TV and sure enough the news coverage was second by second as the saucer-shaped balloon glided through the air and down gently into a dusty field. Then the helpers frantically pitchforked the edges and piled dirt on the balloon so it didn’t take off, all the time calling out the boy’s name, “Falcon, Falcon, Falcon!”

But Falcon wasn’t inside the balloon. And the rumors start that there might have been a missing piece to the balloon and the boy could have fallen. OMG. Fallen from as high as 8,500 feet in the air. Where was Falcon?

And then it ends in the second worst way possible. Not that Falcon is found dead from the fall inside some homemade balloon container that fell from the sky – that would be the worst — but hiding in his own attic by design.

Add the Serlingesq twist that the mother and father coaxed their own children to lie to authorities and the rest of the world:

In the affidavit sworn out by sheriff’s investigator Robert Heffernan, Mayumi Heene said she and her husband knew all along that their son Falcon, 6, was not on board the balloon but rather hiding in their home, and that the motive for the hoax was to make their family "more marketable for future media interest."

Now comes the blame game phase. For most. Not for me. I got duped by what seemed like a horrific, harrowing tale. April Fool’s in October. Bitter? Nope. A little more jaded about what I see on TV? Absolutely.

Stories like this have contributed to my pulling back from blogging and covering the world at large as much as I have for the last 6+ years. At the end of the day it seems like too many of the supposed big stories in the world are phony. The attention that gets paid to non-events and celebrities who live way past excess is depressing not hmm-inspiring. Or maybe it is and I’m just tired and have needed an extended break to be reminded what really matters in the world.

In case anybody reading is wondering and/or cares, I’m still spending dozens of hours a week volunteering at a local non-profit, charitable organization. It’s not going to gain me something as unimportant in the scheme of life as fame like these foolish parents seemed to have been seeking, but it is warming my heart that I’m doing something good on a local level. That matters in a way that Balloon Boy never could.

Next time a friend calls with something that seems too fantastic to be true, I think I’ll leave the TV screen black.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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