![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/loons.jpg\")
Someone
\n must have slipped a dose of Sodium Pentathol into our Diet Coke as we
\n went through security because we feel overwhelmed by a desire to reveal
\n a secret so deeply held we didn’t realize it existed until we were getting
\n ready to come into the Fleet Center this final night of the Democratic
\n National Convention.<\/p>\n
The secret is that the real reason we leapt at the chance to get our
\n hands on convention credentials was not our history as an irredeemable
\n political addict, nor the chance to rub elbows with the jet setters and
\n powers who rule our country, nor even the inevitable boost to our stats
\n which the exposure provides. It was the balloons.<\/p>\n
It must have been 1960, the first time we saw them. We would have
\n been 7 then, and our Dad was a big Kennedy guy, and a minor figure in
\n local politics, so we are sure the convention would have been on the
\n family tube that long-ago July. A bunch of boring grownups talking and
\n talking and talking, and finally one good-looking Daddy-type got everybody
\n to cheering and standing on chairs and throwing their hats in the air,
\n and then, suddenly….<\/p>\n
Balloons!! Everywhere! More balloons than we had ever seen or
\n even imagined in our lives to that point. Pouring out of the ceiling,
\n raining down on the people, who raised their arms as though welcoming
\n and summer rain after a hot humid afternoon. They kept coming, it seemed
\n they would never stop, until finally they were lying all around, completely
\n covering the floor, swallowing up kids caught on camera until only their
\n heads showed atop the sea of balloons, bobbing blond and brown on the
\n surface.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in our seven-year-old mind we knew that someday we would BE
\n THERE when the balloons fell, and wade in them ourselves, someday, somehow. <\/p>\n
And now, hot damn, WE ARE THERE, and there are the balloons, wrapped
\n up in long tube-like nets in the roof of the Fleet Center. Millions of
\n them. And we will be there, finally. It was worth the wait.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Someone must have slipped a dose of Sodium Pentathol into our Diet Coke as we went through security because we feel overwhelmed by a desire to reveal a secret so deeply held we didn’t realize it existed until we were … Continue reading