Tony the Balloon Guy

This weekend I (Tony the Balloon Guy) did a magic show at a party, and then Face Painter Phyllis and I did an hour of balloon entertainment and face painting.

The party was for a three-year-old girl, and during the magic show, a balloon popped three different times (not the same balloon), once as an accident, and twice as part of the magic. The birthday girl was nervous from the beginning, and on that third pop, she was in tears.

Yikes!

But then she got a GINORMOUS birthday hat made on her head, and she started striking model poses for the camera. Then Phyllis painted a princess crown on her forehead. And she was all smiles.

As I make things out of balloons, I snap off pieces that are too long. Sometimes they fly around. Sometimes they make a bang or a snap. By this point in the party, whenever a balloon popped, the birthday girl would stop whatever she was doing and look over at me and LAUGH!!! I don’t think she’ll ever be afraid of balloons again. No more tears.

When the balloon swords came out, I was her favorite target.

Let me tell you something about girls and swords…

Whenever a girl asks for a sword, the parents are like, “A sword? YOU want a sword?”

But little girls are about ten times as vicious with swords as little boys are.

An example: we did a party at a dance studio, for a five-year-old ballerina and her friends. When the swords came out, it was pandemonium. And as there was only one young man there, perhaps nine or ten years old, they attacked him as a mob.

At another party of mostly girls, mom was video-ing the carnage of the massive sword fight, and it looked like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean!

Little boys will strike poses with their swords, make fancy Star Wars fencing moves, and hit at each other one-on-one, or in groups of three or four. Little girls will fill the room with one huge battle.

I think another ten-year-old boy summed it up best after surviving being one of three boys attacked by a hoard of little girls with swords: “You don’t think they can do anything to you, but they’re little, like ants, and they hurt!!!”

Daddies’ little princesses don’t need no princes to take care of them!

Have a fun day!

www.TonyTheBalloonGuy.com

At the Target grand opening Tuesday, I (Tony the Balloon Guy) asked a kid of about 5 or 6 years of age what he wanted made of balloons, and I rattled off 15 or 20 things he might consider. He said a brontosaurus.

As I started making the beast, his mom (the kid’s mom, not the brontosaurus’ mom) asked if he knew what a brontosaurus was. He said no, and we all three kind of chuckled.

Then he said, “It must be some kind of dinosaur, though.”

“That’s right,” I said. “How did you know that?”

“Seems like everything that ends with ‘-saurus’ is a dinosaur.”

Mom and I were impressed. “I didn’t even teach him that,” she said.

I went home and threw away my thesaurus, out of fear.

Have a fun day!

www.TonyTheBalloonGuy.com

I (Tony the Balloon Guy) hit this wall. However hard I tried, the oldest birthday kid I had ever done a party for was 16.

Don’t get me wrong – it was a great party! The balloons went over well, and instead of a pony, we brought a horse. And the 16-year-old’s grandma rode the horse, too. Lots of fun.

Generally, big kids like balloons. That’s why I do balloon entertainment at Nature Coast Technical High School’s homecoming dance each year.

But I wanted to do a birthday party for someone even older.

Well, finally, on October 24th, I will do a birthday party for a 31-year-old. True, he says I’ll mostly be there for the kids, but I consider it a victory.

He’ll only hold the record for a week, though.

On October 31st, I’m doing a birthday party for a 90-year-old.

Have a fun day!

www.TonyTheBalloonGuy.com