PICAYUNE — The scene plays out, the cops have the bad guy in cuffs, his fake mask is pulled from his head and the gasps of the reveal are uttered as the old farmer cries, “And I would have got away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!”

Scooby Doo and the gang should have been on the great hoax of 2009, because nobody gets away with scary hoaxes on Scooby’s shift. Thankfully, for this deception we had a canine of another kind investigating the flying saucier soap opera, Wolf Blitzer.

How brilliant of Wolf to just point blank ask the balloon kid a tough, probing question. He sang like an American Idol wannabe! You see Rush, journalism isn’t so dead after all. We can crack six year olds on CNN.

Falcon did not fly, but also could not lie — or act.

Where do I start? The road to crazy town has been paved before Balloon Boy with favorite reality-cravers like the Octo Mom, a woman who purposely birthed eight babies at one time to add to her collection of six. Her motivation? She loves kids. That is her rehearsed answer, but as an emotionally challenged individual, me thinks she was seeking her 15 minutes and as an obliging public, we gave her 15 and whole lot more, such as fame, news coverage, paparazzi and her own reality show.

Here is an idea for her show, put her in a giant shoe, along with Kate and Jon Gosselin and stick them in a very large closet. Out of sight and out of mind.

I’m not sure if all of Octo’s and Kate’s brain cells are still there. Studies show that women who are pregnant lose brain cells until six months after the child is born. Hah! I can prove this study is wrong. Any mother I ask will back me up, because normal brain activity — if it does resume — occurs after the child is grown. By that rate, the Octo Mom is brain dead.

The Heene family has no excuses. They are raising children in an environment of false reality already. The new movie based on a children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are” may have been read one too many times by this wacky family. Why would little Falcon take a boat to where the Wild things are when he can just sit at home and be raised by them?

It was a stupid plan formulated by two professed homemade scientists who expounded how adventurous and explorative they are, promoting an intelligence they seem to lack. Any normal mother of small children would tell you that kids do lie and they do it often, but they usually never do it well. Kids tell everything! Just ask an elementary school teacher. If you think you have family secrets, then you are in a denial mode.

Have you ever asked your child to tell a small, white lie? Like on the phone, I have made calls to speak to a parent and the kid answers and says honest things like, ‘My mom said she is not here right now.’

Kids tell lies better when monsters are involved. Falcon could have said he was on an island with giant hairy creatures with horns and he might have put some enthusiasm into the lie.

Who knows, it is possible the flying saucer hoax of 2009 could have been much worse. Don’t you think the father actually considered putting the boy in the balloon at one point? Don’t you think he had to scratch that plan when he could not engineer the feat? It’s possible. If he drives them into tornadoes, what is a balloon flight? Look what it did for Dorothy and her ruby slippers.

Bad kids are popping up everywhere in the news this past week, it’s an epidemic. Kids are arming themselves with knives to go to school, such as the little guy with his spoon and butter knife combo that was suspended. But it’s a Zero Tolerance attitude that has gotten out of control. Mistakes happen. I’m sure both sides have a point, but shouldn’t an individual review of the motivations and specific individual result in a better judgment?

For example, this past week, with all the nagging headlines about school suspensions of Eagle Scouts, little boys with their dangerous contraband, my own eight year old accidentally broke the rules.

Thankfully, no one caught him. It was an honest mistake. But, if the discovery had been made, would he have been suspended?

The problem is that we have a backpack similar to his school pack that is carried when we go on long hiking trips and inside this bag we leave equipment such as a lighter, multiple use knife, and a container of mace. I had it out from a recent trip and my third grader grabbed it on the way out the door instead of his identical one filled with school books and crayons.

If it had been the other twin, the situation would have ended differently because he is a stickler for following the rules and would have tattled on himself. So, no flying space balloon rides for him in our family!

Did the fame hungry father who-would-do-anything-for-publicity chastise his son after the interview for telling the truth?

What could be worse, asking your kid to lie or punishing him when he fails to lie? I try to feel sympathy for Falcon even when he clearly acts rude, uses colorful metaphors freely in his speech, and seems out of control, but he is just modeling himself after his father. Can he help that Richard Heene is a kook? None of us can choose our parents and we end up more like them than we intend.

I have one reality pitch for the Heene’s, the Gosselins, and the Octo Mom — we pay them to go away. Maybe in a much larger balloon over the rainbow where I can go back to real news stories and real Celebs. I will put in a couple of dollars for that.

If you are wondering, where are the wild things just turn on your cable television at any time of the day or night and you will find the crazies, the kooks, and the wildest creatures on reality television. The scariest part is that for every crazy nut on the screen, there are many more living amongst us, the only difference is they don’t have a camera crew... yet.



Tracy Williams is a guest columnist and can be reached at her website: myhometowncolumn.com or join her My Hometown Column FaceBook page.