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Why We Watched Balloon Boy

The Heene family’s saga captivated the country, cut parents to the quick—and left us wondering what, exactly, we were looking for.

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Thursday, as we all watched the televised spectacle of what everyone believed was a 6-year-old boy trapped in a wooden box attached to a helium balloon that was soaring uncontrollably thousands of feet above the earth, it seemed that our deepest fears were being turned into myth before our very...

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