The Black Balloon

[I knew it from my gf, Nana, and she heard it from Mr. Pan Sothea.]

In America before the time of Martin Luther King when the term "black" was daily used for mocking people, there was a man selling balloons of many colors, including black. In that time, people, especially kids, weren't familiar with balloon, so the man's business wasn't so good. To attract people, the man occasionally released a balloon into the air, letting it fly up into the sky, up so high that people noticed it and started buying his balloon. He often did so, and up it went--a pink balloon, a green balloon, a red balloon, a blue balloon, and so on.

There was this poor and naive kid whose skin was black living in the block. The kid kept following the man everyday just to have glimpses of the bunch of colorful balloons tied to his bike and waiting for the released balloons to fall back down so that the kid could play with them without having to buy them, which the kid couldn't. As the man released his balloon from time to time, the boy noticed that he never released the black one. Since the kid was black, by default in that time, the kid thought that he deserved the black balloon if he could ever have one.

The boy waited for days for the released balloons to fall back, especially the black one, but the black hadn't been released yet. The kid finally asked the man what was wrong with the black one. "Couldn't the black balloon fly like others?" the kid asked. "I don't have money to buy it, but I want to play with it. But first, you have to release it so that it can fall back down," the kid added naively. The man felt so sympathetic and answered, "The black one can definitely fly like others. It's not the color that helps the balloon fly. It's the gas inside it." The man continued encouragingly, "It's not the outside appearance that makes a person special. It's who s/he is deep down inside that can either make or break her/him. It's not the skin color that makes you a loved one. If you're a good man, whom you will be in the near future I believe, you'll be loved by others, becoming a special person. Be that person, kid."

Learn something from it? Of course, you do.