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To be a balloon handler in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—much like trying to be anything in New York City—you have to know somebody. Since the parade’s start in 1924, the positions that guide enormous helium-filled balloons through Manhattan have been reserved for Macy’s colleagues, their friends and families, and what the company’s website calls those “who have a relationship” to the parade. While I certainly have a strong attachment to the parade, I don’t have a relationship to Macy’s.

I first knew I wanted to be a balloon handler the year the balloons were a total disaster. It was 1997. I was 9. My family watched the annual event from our living room in No

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