A preposterously large orange umbrella floated down from the sky and landed upside down in a sandbox in a playground. Immediately, several toddlers and other young ’uns began to crawl and wobble into it. When seven or eight had done so, the umbrella suddenly snapped shut, enclosing them, and began rising. It ascended fitfully, as if a rope attached to its curved handle were being hauled by sailors on a ship in the heavens. One could almost hear, "Heave ho!" echoing down through the sparse clouds.

When they realized what was happening, an assortment of mothers, fathers, babysitters, and nannies began to panic, shout, and hop up and down. One intrepid man climbed to the top of a jungle gym, hoping that the umbrella would drift his way. It did not. It continued straight up.

Someone used a cell phone to call the police and, impressively, within two minutes, a squad car arrived on the scene. By this time, however, the umbrella full of children was visible only as an indistinct orange speck in the sun’s glare. The policemen who had answered the call were frustrated by the apparent mass lunacy of the adults in the playground. They could not make heads or tails of what was supposed to have happened. Hoping to transfer the duty of making sense of the situation, they radioed the precinct and relayed the witnesses’ accounts exactly.

"Well," said the dispatcher, "we have a helicopter in the area. I’ll send it your way. Maybe from the air, they’ll be able to see what that ‘umbrella’ really is."

The helicopter pilot was instructed simply to identify the object in the sky some five hundred feet above the playground. It was a curious assignment, but an easy one. She knew the playground, having grown up in the neighborhood, and had no trouble bringing the helicopter over it. As she did so, her partner looked out and saw that the object in question was indeed a preposterously large upside-down orange umbrella rising fitfully, but steadily, into the sky. While trying to find a vantage point from which she could verify this with her own eyes, the pilot maneuvered the helicopter directly above the umbrella. Immediately, as if the invisible rope that the imaginary sailors seemed to be hauling from on high had been severed by the helicopter’s rotating blades, the umbrella began to plummet back towards the playground.

"My God," shouted the helicopter pilot’s partner. "It’s falling."

Then he saw something being ejected from the umbrella’s handle. It filled with air and revealed itself to be a yellow parachute. The umbrella decelerated and was soon descending gently, drifting on the wind.

The policemen, mothers, fathers, babysitters, and nannies ran from the playground and through the streets to meet the umbrella when it finally landed on the sidewalk four blocks away. Upon touching the ground, the umbrella opened, and the children, some crying, some giggling, some looking about them in wonder, were scooped up by their guardians and tearfully hugged.

One of the policemen found a note attached to the umbrella’s handle.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," he read aloud.

Then, as one, the adults all looked up to the sky and squinted. Except for the hovering helicopter, however, there was nothing there for them to see.