Take Note, Wayward Children

Here's the strategy, kids: if you do something bad, consider hiding for so long that your parents think you are missing and mount a search effort. When you emerge from your hiding place they will be so happy to see you that they will completely forget what you did before you disappeared:

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — For hours on Thursday, people around the country were gripped by television images of a homemade silver balloon careening through the skies near here, whooshing over fields and trees and yards with a 6-year-old boy believed inside.

A search party was readied — on foot, on horseback, in helicopters loaded with infrared sensors — to scour the aircraft’s path of more than 60 miles, some terrified that the boy might have fallen from his accidental perch.

In the early afternoon, the balloon landed near Denver International Airport, but the boy was not in it. At last, near dusk, he was found, hiding in a box in his family’s garage attic, fearful his father would be angry at him for touching the flying machine his father had built in their backyard.