I know that most of you are too high-minded to have been watching television the other day when people were fretting about what had become of the little six year-old boy who was feared to have been carried off by a weather balloon. I missed it myself, being occupied with winterizing a house.

Here's the story: the family, amateur storm chasers, had a silver weather balloon that looks like a UFO tethered in their back yard. The dad yelled at the kids to stop playing around it, and then later the 10 year-old brother came to them and said the 6 year-old had crawled into the compartment on the underside of the balloon and it drifted off.

The father called the FAA and the news stations. The mother, who is Japanese and has a very thick accent, called 911, and it was hard for them to understand her, but they finally did. The local sheriffs were in a panic because they wanted to get a helicopter to follow the balloon, and they pictured someone being lowered from the copter in a basket to pluck the youngster out of mid-air. They couldn't find a helicopter to rent, so they contacted the television news people and a couple of news helicopters came to help.

Not much later the balloon landed gently in a field maybe 40 miles away, but when people rushed to it, there was nobody aboard. Oh, the agony! Everyone pictured this poor twisted child's body lying in the middle of nowhere after falling hundreds of feet to the ground.

But then! Little Whatsis appeared at home. His story was that his dad yelled at him for messing with the balloon so he climbed into a box in the rafters of the garage to pout and fell asleep. Ah, ha, ha. All's well that ends well. No, little cutie's not going to get into trouble, we're just happy he's okay.

The sheriff said that there would be no charge for the search and rescue operations, and in fact the various agencies said they were grateful for the opportunity to practice coordination of their resources.

Ooops, though. Next day here come the Clouds of Suspicion: the story didn't hang together. One big give-away was that when the family was interviewed on CNN, the little tyke said: "I heard you calling me." And the mother said: "Why didn't you come out?" "Because you guys said not to for the show." Big oops. In subsequent interviews, the little kid 'got sick' when any questions were directed to him.

The people who searched the house claim that they didn't think the kid could climb up into the garage rafters (where he claimed he was) so they hadn't searched there. Later the dad let slip that was one of the kid's particular favorite hidey holes (but he didn't mention it during the search). The sheriff has said for all he knows now, the kid could have been down the street playing on the park swings and not even anywhere around the house where he could be found.

"Foul!" Cries the world. Come to find out, this man (not sure if with this same wife) was on Wife Swap once a few years ago, so was trying to sell the idea of another reality show and this looks to be a ploy to help that along. I think I remember that episode, and he was one of those particularly immature men for whom there was no hope of getting him to act like a parent to his children.

He's really a strange guy, sort of a scientist wanna-be, but only a high-school education. He met this wife in acting class in California (this confirms the local opinion that all the goof-balls around here migrated from California), and that accounts for the sheriff's office personnel who decided it couldn't be a hoax because of how upset the family was when they didn't know the fate of their youngest child.

Yesterday the dad came out of his house at 6 am and promised the media camped outside his house that he would make a big announcement at a 10:30 am press conference, but when the time came, he came out with a box and told them to write their questions and put them in the box, and then he never came and got the box.

Local physicists (real ones) proved that the family's balloon didn't have the power to lift off with a 6 year-old on board, and the sheriff got a search warrant for the house, looking for clues.

Now charges are pending. In today's paper the sheriffs were bemoaning the fact that they couldn't come up with any felonies, so far it's only a misdemeanor (didn't say what), but they are looking into federal charges because Denver Int'l Airport was closed down for a bit during the search.

And there is a bill for at least some of the search - $15,000 for two National Guard helicopters, and I'm sure there will be more.