Banyan Bat: Trick to an easy knot to an inflated balloon

As I told in my last post, I was attending a birthday party for one of my friend's daughter. It was a friend's daughter's birthday, so this uncle had to do something to help the overworked father complete the necessary arrangements. So, I chose the simplest of the tasks, well I thought so. Inflating balloons!! You would say, its not that easy, you have to exhaust your lungs. Haha... I am smart. I had already noticed that he had the pump to do that job, so I thought it would be fun. But I missed one important part. The inflated balloon needs to be tied so that it does not loose its air. How could I miss that? And (not so) surprisingly I was worst in doing that until that day.

So I shared my misery with my friend engaged in the same endeavour of helping the overworked father. Luckily he knew just how to do that. He courteously shared the steps with me and helped me learn it too. Thanks to him, it was a joy to inflate those balloons and tie knots on them.

Here are the steps for people like me (unless you all know it very well). Steps courtesy: The Friend: Rahul.

Step 1: Inflate the balloon using a pump or your own lung capacity. Make sure you don't blow it to explosion (Trust me, it happens. We exploded a bunch of them :) and we kinda loved it.).

Step 2: Hold the balloon in your left hand like so. Notice the index finger and thumb pointing up.

Step 3: Pull the open end of the balloon as far as you can safely holding it with index finger and thumb of your right hand.

Step 4: Now, pushing the balloon down with the three fingers of your right hand, push the stretched end of the balloon from above the balloon besides/along with the index finger of your left hand as shown in the pictures below. (Forgive me if I could not put it in words correctly. Believe me, I tried real hard.)

Step 5: Now, pull the open end of balloon slowly taking the index finger of your left hand out. The smooth and shiny nails really come in handy here.