I Hate Balloons

Somebody had a party, and this is what's left. A mess. I hate balloons more than I can say. They're tacky. They're scary when they burst in your face. They can kill. (Balloons cause more choking deaths than any other toy.) And even if you have bad taste and don't care about your own kids, careless disposal--as illustrated in this photo--poses dangers to wildlife. Birds get tangled in the strings and ingest the latex. Whales and other marine animals eat the latex, too. And as festive as a bunch of balloons is supposed to be, there's nothing more pathetic than a pile of deflated balloons stuck to a rusty fence. Yuck and double yuck.