Clumsy Clumsy Hippos

It’s great to feel good at something. And for most people, myself included, it feels horrible to well and truly suck at a task. I’ve always had trouble going down new avenues in life, because I get discouraged if I’m not immediately masterful, and I convince myself pretty quickly that I’ll never be any good at something. And that’s how I got into balloons.

See, I’m really not very good with my hands. I’m left-handed, and the French word for left-handers is “gauche,” which is also their word for clumsy. (Still better than the ancient Romans, who thought left-handers were “sinister.”) I had to do physical therapy when I was younger to be able to even tie my shoes, and I still prefer to double knot them like a kid, or even use velcro. Back in my teenage days, I once tried to impress my friends by bringing in The Anarchists Cookbook, and of course ended up starting a bomb scare. When my parents were brought into the office, they were asked if they thought I would really make a bomb, and my mom replied, “Ari can’t even make toast.”

So taking on balloon animals was, if you look at it a certain way, a brave and (bear with me on this one) remarkably adult thing for me to try my clumsy hand at. And, at first, I was indeed pretty poor at it. Oh, sure, I got the dog down pretty quickly, and variations like giraffe and bunny, but it took me a long long time to get pinch twists down, and you need that for basically anything else. Heck, I had to watch YouTube videos on how to tie a balloon in the first place!

I still take a few seconds longer to tie off a balloon than other twisters. But the important thing is that I have put a lot of energy and time into improving. I practiced and practiced and practiced, even when, for a while, I had no real indication I’d get any better. And now I can crank out something as precise as a stegosaurus in very little time. So although for selling-myself purposes I should probably pretend that I’m some kind of balloon prodigy and that this stuff takes an amazing amount of skill, when someone asks how I do it, I’m honest and say I’ve only been doing it for a few months, that I’m really quite clumsy, and that if I can do this anyone can, given a bit of time and practice.

Someday soon I’ll do an instructional video on how to get started twisting balloons, and I hope some of my readers will give it a try. Because not only is it fun, but it’s much, much easier to pick up than it looks. But even if you don’t, I’d strongly encourage you to try something else that you think you’d be bad at. And when you are indeed bad at it, try to remember that failure is always the first step.

Until next time, balloon goons. Stay twisted.