A Different Balloon Animal

When I was about seven or eight years old, my mother and I lived in this little condo in Ontario.

This was before all the strip malls and such were built up on Foothill Blvd.

This was when there were vineyards all over Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga. In fact, there was a Vineyard right across the street from our condo complex. A neighborhood friend, Tootsie, and I would cross the street (something that was allowed back then) and steal grapes and eat them right off the vine. It was awesome.

I have fond memories of this condo. My Grandpa taught me how to ride a bike in the alley behind the condo. I had Holly Hobby themed wallpaper on my bedroom walls. I ate grilled cheese sandwiches like they were going out of style. And my mom would throw me birthday parties on the little patio that separated our condo from our garage.


One early, sleepy, school day morning (not long after one of my patio birthday parties), my Mom slid open the sliding glass door and stepped out from the kitchen onto the patio to either go start the car in the garage or to go get something out of the garage. It was dark and she was barefoot.

One step out the door and my Mother stepped on something slimy and freaked out. It was not uncommon for the snails to start their daily cruise from one end of the patio to the other at this time in the morning. Stepping out from the kitchen in order to get to the garage, one would be likely to hear the crunch of a snail shell under one's tennis shoes if one wasn't watching where one was stepping.

Having no love for snails (or slugs), Mom reached in to the kitchen, grabbed the salt off the nearby counter and proceeded to sprinkle the heck out of the poor, slimy creature. Then she scrubbed the bottom of her foot. If you don't know what salt does to snails, try it sometime.

We managed to get to school and work with no other snail (or slug) incidences.

Upon our arrival home, stepping from the garage on to the patio and heading toward the kitchen door, my mother happened to notice that not everything was cleaned up from my birthday party.

In front of the kitchen door was a deflated, dead balloon. Completely covered in salt.