a story my sister in law told me, very slightly enhanced for entertainment purposes:
My sister in law and brother took their 11 kids or whatever to this family fun thing with music and arts and crafts and games and Dora the Goddamn Explorer and all this shit. The event's biggest draw was a guy making balloon animals and there was a 45-minute line to get them, which my family patiently waited through. A while later, they placed the balloon animals on a nearby table, freeing their hands to make crafts. So they made macaroni pictures, puff balls with googly eyes, friendship bracelets, and whatever else...sparkly pictures with glitter and glue. Then they went back to the table to find that the balloon animals that they'd waited so long for were no longer there. The kids were upset and the parents were upset to see the kids upset. On the way to the parking lot, they spotted a mother and her kids, carrying a familiar looking set of balloon animals and upon closer inspection they confirmed that these were the same ones that they'd lost (Sandy drew faces on them with a marker). Sandy confronted their mother and the exchange went something like this:
Sandy: Excuse me, I think those balloons belong to my kids.
Mother: They were sitting on a table by the arts and crafts area unattended.
Sandy: Yes, we left them on that table while we were doing arts and crafts.
Mother: Well if they're left with nobody around and nobody watching them, they're fair game. That's the rule.
I'm not knocking this lady for getting defensive. It's what any human being would have done. It's the way her defensiveness manifested itself that I find so entertaining. Apparently, there's an unspoken rule about unattended balloon animals? Whatever. It's the first time I've ever heard of it. I guess it's kinda like the laundromat rule where if your basket is on top of a machine, that's like having "dibs" on it, even if it's not being used at the moment.
Human behavior is mostly pretty predictable. It's those variances within that predictable behavior that make up the spice of life.
