In their words: The acorn balloon in this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
In a word, I am ashamed.
The crunch under-toe. The thunk on a parked car roof. The snap of a curious dog’s teeth. These are the sounds I was meant to create. Yet here I find myself, suspended in the air, inciting the awed cheers and jeers of a crowd of thousands with my grotesque existence. I ask, over and over, Whose sick idea was this?
My entire purpose is to fall, and yet they have made me float. They have inflated me with helium and they hold me with string, keeping my inanimate mortal coil in a state of purgatory — neither can I descend nor can I go back up to the giant wretched tree from whence I cam. I am an affront to God. Please, release me from this repugnant exhibition.
Acorn. A-corn. A… forlorn acorn.
I beg of my wranglers, many feet below: Release your grips from the ties that bind my hardened shell — or else pop me. Please, someone pop me.
What monstrous oak was I meant to become? And how can I become anything when I am filled with nothing? I am at once enormous in size and yet not even a whisper of creation do I contain.
In a word, I am ashamed.
Give thanks and order my debut book
My debut satirical essay collection This Won’t Help is out now, and it’s already been listed as a New Yorker best book of the week! If you don’t have a copy yet, you can order it on Amazon, Bookshop, or — better yet — through your local indie bookstore. If you already have a copy, you’re due for another.
Here’s what early readers of This Won’t Help are saying:
That’s all for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next Thanksgiving week.
An existential acorn crisis - brilliant!