“Billy was a foil balloon that was born in a grocery store. He was a shiny silver balloon with a special message that said I Love You in bright red letters.” Billy the Balloon is a story that will assure, inspire, and give the reader hope that everything will be OK because everything happens for a purpose. It is story about how a farmer named Fred, his special needs grandson, JP, and Sally, a young city girl, are wondrously brought together for a benefit party by a balloon called Billy. Don Moore is a Professor of Management of Organizations at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he teaches popular courses in leadership, negotiations, and decision-making. He also consults on these topics. With Max Bazerman, he is the coauthor of Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, one of the bestselling textbooks in the field. Additionally, Moore was one of the principal investigators on the Good Judgment Project, a forecasting tournament sponsored by the U.S. government’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). The forecasters involved established an excellent record predicting the outcomes of major world events, and this project was chronicled by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner in their 2015 book, Superforecasting. Moore has authored or coauthored columns published by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, Fortune, Forbes Leadership Forum, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Harvard Business Review, the Harvard Negotiation Newsletter, and others. His work has been covered in The New York Times, Money, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Financial Times, The New Yorker, Businessweek, Forbes, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, The Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Entrepreneur, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, CNN, NPR, KCBS, PredictablyIrrational.com, Freakonomics.com, and numerous other media outlets and websites. Moore writes a blog entitled Perfectly Confident for Psychology Today. Billy the Balloon By Daniel Moore Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2018 Daniel Moore All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59555-788-9 CHAPTER 1 The first thing that Billy heard was a noise that went ssssssssss The first thing that Billy felt was that he was growing bigger and BIGGER. The first thing that Billy saw was a big room filled with green and yellow vegetables, red and orange fruits, and purple and white flowers. Billy was a foil balloon that was born in a grocery store. He was a shiny silver balloon with a special message that said I Love You in bright red letters. Sally's dad had stopped by the grocery store that day to pick up some ice cream and a balloon for Sally's birthday party. He knew as soon as he saw that shiny silver balloon that he had found the perfect balloon for Sally. It was a lovely day for Sally's party – sunny but breezy, the daffodils had begun to bloom, and the birds were chirping. Sally was a wonderful girl who was loved by many and her parents wanted her to have a very special birthday party. Sally was anxiously waiting for her dad to come home for the party. Her mother had made a special birthday pie, for Sally liked pie better than cake! Sally squealed with excitement when she saw her father drive up the driveway and park his car. She hurried outside to give her dad a big hug. He got out of the car holding a grocery bag and some ribbons and said, "Happy birthday!" to young Sally. Before he had a chance to tell her to wait, Sally grabbed the ribbons and pulled Billy the Balloon out of the car and into the breezy air. The force of the wind grabbed Billy and pulled him loose from Sally's hand. Sally shrieked as her father dropped the ice cream and jumped for the little balloon, but it was too late. Billy was already soaring into the big, blue sky. Sally felt bad that she had lost the balloon and began to cry. Her dad hugged her as he knelt by her side. He told her that the wind blows where it wills and perhaps the little balloon would find a new home and bring someone else joy and happiness who really needs it. For some reason, Sally felt at peace with his answer. Everything was going to be OK! Billy the Balloon felt scared at first because he had never soared so freely before, nor had he ever flown so high in the sky before. He tried to say "Goodbye" to the little girl, but nothing came out. All Sally could see as he flew away were the words – I Love You. Many miles away there lived a farmer named Fred. He was a wheat farmer who spent many hours on a big wheel tractor in his fields of wheat. As he would tend to his crops, many times he would come across balloons that had been blown in the wind and had landed in his field. He would stop his tractor and gently gather all of the pieces together, for sometimes the little balloons would get torn in the storms or ripped by rough landings. He would say to the balloons as he found them, "Hello my little messenger friend "— for most balloons had Congratulation