Balloon DNA is Just Not Fun

There is a remarkable misdistribution of wealth in the world and, as a balloon twister, I often see both ends. When I do a gig at a school where the parents can barely afford school supplies, I see one end. When I do a gig at the Premier Institute of Technology University's Welcome Class of 2009 Carnival, I see the other end.

I was a little worried about sustaining for the duration of the PIT Carnival gig because it started at 10PM and ended at 2AM, which is very late for someone who is no longer in college. But there was not a lot less pressure on me to perform seeing as students could also occupy themselves with the Bounce House, Sumo Wrestler Ring, Velcro Wall, or Dunk Tank or they could just feed themselves for the four hours with pizza, cotton candy, chips, soda, brownies, cookies...I laughed a little to myself recalling that I had TOTALLY been to that party before at my University, and that it was a thinly veiled way of saying, "Have fun now; study your ass off tomorrow."

The PIT Class of 2009 were remarkably uncreative (they said so themselves!) in their balloon requests (lots of beaver requests, the school mascot), but I did have a few students challenge me--one to make a millipede (with ALL 1000 legs) and the other to make DNA. I asked him why he wanted DNA, which I thought was a pretty unfun thing to have made out of balloons, and he proceeded to tell me how amazing it was that the assembling of proteins could map out every single thing we are made of....I got bored listening to him and especially because I felt like he thought I was maybe dumb and didn't know what DNA was because I was making balloon animals. Yes, kid, DNA is very cool, but asking for DNA made out of balloons: not so cool.