I was flying over the Great Lakes today on my way to Chicago, and a strange - I hate to say it, but unearthly - feeling came over me. Very weird. It made me think of the anecdotes I'd read from Whitley Streiber's books on Alien Abductions, and his suppositions that people have been abducted mid-flight by aliens, only to be returned with the fellow passengers knowing nothing of the incursion. Spooky.

On landing at O'Hare, while waiting to taxi into the Terminal, I was perusing the BBC news website on my Treo 650 when I came across a humorous article, detailing 10 Unusual Accidents, pulled from Department of Health records for 2004. The standard kind of filler on a slow news day. The last entry on the list reads:

10. One child was admitted to hospital after ’Äúprolonged stay in a weightless environment’Äù. He or she did not stay overnight. There are no further details about who this person was or how they had come to need treatment.

Sherlock Holmes famously said ’ÄúWhen you eliminate the impossible, the remainder -- however improbable -- must be the truth.’Äù And I started thinking of any explanation I could of how a child would spend a ’Äúprolonged stay in a weightless environment’Äù.

If anyone can think of an answer more suitable than ’Äúalien abduction’Äù, please let me know.