Blogging over at Health Bistro today about “Falcon Heene and the Flying Machine” — and how we all sort of hoped that truth was stranger than fiction for a day and maybe a little boy could really fly his own Mylar balloon up into the sky. For those of you living outside of the United States (or somehow managing to step away from Twitter and all television news for several hours yesterday), here’s a link to the events that held the nation transfixed for most of the day. To America, the “balloon boy” was a little James and the Giant Peach and Winnie the Pooh and Around the World in 80 Days all rolled into one, wasn’t he?
And then his story became a little Tom Sawyer.
Did we suspend our disbelief (like a Mylar balloon carrying 50 pounds of anything) because we wanted a little “fantastical”? Did we ignore basic science principles because of good-old-fashioned storytelling? I think it speaks to the fact that — despite being in an Age of Information — we are, at heart, always craving an amazing story.
Come on over to my post and tell me what grabbed you most about the story. Was it the UFO-chasing parents? The helicopters trying to stop a balloon? The hope that a little boy could be “flying” it? (Or perhaps the worry he could not.) Or the fact that the parents were already on TV twice before? — There were certainly enough “truth is stranger than fiction” details to go around!
