Blow up.

Yesterday I stopped down at the supermarket for a few quick items -- you know, mousetraps, lye, gunpowder -- and noted that the customer service counter was appropriately festive for Cinco de Mayo. 

¡Hurra! 

Everything is a balloon now. You go down to the store, thinking, "I hope I can find a nice Get Well balloon for poor Sam, still suffering from infection from his cut-rate septoplasty. Gee, I wonder if they might have a square balloon?"

Nailed it.

I like balloons, sure. They're festive. They float. They're colorful. It can be a little sad when they get deflated and it's three weeks after the party but you just don't have the heart to bust the Mylar and call it a day. But really, what's not to like? Things that float are always fun.

Last year I followed with interest the Twitter feed of an orange balloon trapped on the ceiling of St. Albert the Great Parish in Calgary. It had lasted past Christmas and I wondered if wagering was going to break out among the followers -- I counted myself as one, even though I'm not on Twitter. Anticipating a fever pitch, I considered reactivating my PayPal account. But before I could get a pool together, the balloon lost its heavenly vantage and returned to earth.

The problem with balloons is, are they wasting helium? Most people aren't aware of the fact that we can't make helium. There's a whale of a lot of it in the universe... but what we have is what we have. And some folks are worried about it.

For years the U.S. strategic helium reserve was cited as a waste of taxpayer money, and following the Cold War, the program was finally killed. But helium does have a lot of uses besides our little floating containers of joy. As Forbes reported in 2017:

Since it's both non-reactive and inert, it can be used at high temperatures and in oxygen-rich environments without a risk of explosion. The speed of sound is almost three times greater in helium than in air, leading to acoustic applications. And at atmospheric pressure but at low temperatures, it liquefies but never solidifies, making it the ultimate coolant for particle accelerators, MRI machines, and superconductors.

And yet when this useful element makes it to the atmosphere, it gets kicked out into space.

I don't know what we can do to solve the upcoming helium crisis. And if I did, no one would listen to me. Even the dogs don't listen to me.

Oh, helium, most noble gas! Number two on the Periodic Table, number one in our hearts. You float our balloons, you float our hearts. What shall we do if you are gone?