The Difference Between a Balloon and a Ball

Rebecca has been playing with a balloon she got at the grocery store for several days now. This is nothing unusual, since they give away free balloons at the grocery store and the kids always ask for them when we go. Usually they play with them for half an hour, then lose them on our 20 foot ceilings despite the fact that I tie them around their wrists. After a day the balloons come down and they kick and throw them around like balls until I get annoyed with having half-deflated balloons kicking around and they mysteriously vanish....

Well today Rebecca discovered the difference between a balloon and a ball. She has a little beach ball that she sometimes likes to try to sit on, and today she decided to try to sit on her balloon. I saw her trying to position her little tush over it and warned her not to sit on it.... but since she never pays any attention to me she sat on it anyway.

It popped, of course, leaving Rebecca sitting on the floor utterly mystified. "It popped," I told her. She stood up, examined the spot on the floor where the balloon had just been, and spread her hands questioningly. Then she said, quite clearly, "Why did it pop?" I explained to her again that you can't sit on balloons. For the next five minutes she walked around aimlessly, looking for her balloon and asking "Why did it pop?" over and over again.