In 1284, the story goes, the Pied Piper visited the German town of Hamelin. He offered the residents a deal: for a thousand guilders, he would rid their town of rats. The townspeople agreed, and the piper began to play a lively tune upon his fife. He lured all the rats from their nests and led them to the river, where they drowned. But, when the Pied Piper asked the people of Hamelin for his fee, they would not pay. And so, to get revenge, he played a new tune on his fife. This time, however, it wasn’t the townspeople’s rats who flocked to him; it was their children. They danced toward him, unable to resist his haunting melody. He led a hundred and thirty boys and girls out from the town’s walls, and they were headed for the river when they passed a McDonald’s.

“Can we get McDonald’s?” a red-haired boy with freckles asked.

“No,” the Pied Piper said, between fife puffs. He assumed that would be the end of it, but the other hundred and twenty-nine children had heard the word “McDonald’s,” and though they were still dancing—captivated by his fife’s spell—they were also now all begging for McDonald’s.

“There’s no way we’re stopping,” the Pied Piper said. “We wouldn’t even fit inside the restaurant.”

“There’s a drive-through,” said the kid with freckles, whom the Pied Piper was beginning to despise. And the children all chanted “McDonald’s” for so long that the Pied Piper eventually decided that the easiest thing would just be to fucking take them to McDonald’s.

“A hundred and thirty four-piece McNugget Happy Meals and a large black coffee,” he said into the intercom. He turned to the kid with freckles: “Do you realize this puts me in the negative for Hamelin? I was supposed to make a thousand guilders—now I’m down a thousand.” The kid ignored him. He’d already grabbed the first Happy Meal out of the window and was ripping it open with his grimy hands.

“I don’t like my toy,” he said.

“That’s not on me,” the Pied Piper said. “I don’t control which toy comes in which box. It’s random.”

The child began to cry.

“O.K., look,” the Pied Piper said. “If you don’t like your toy, just trade with someone.” But he immediately regretted saying that, because now all the children were running up to him, asking him to adjudicate their trades, like, was it fair to trade a Super Mario figurine for seven French fries, or a sticker sheet for barbecue sauce.

“I’m not the trade police!” the Pied Piper said. And then the freckled kid started to cry again, because he’d traded a Bowser for a McNugget but had since eaten the nugget, leaving him with nothing.

“That’s what happens when you eat something!” the Pied Piper said. “It goes away! That’s how food works!”

And the kid cried harder. A lot of kids were crying, actually. Even though he’d bought them all McDonald’s.

The Pied Piper wanted to drown the children more than ever. But they were still miles from the river, and he was getting sick of playing “Baby Shark” on his fife. And so he led them back to Hamelin, where the townspeople were waiting for him—with his thousand guilders!

“Thanks for taking them for a few hours,” the mayor said. “It felt so good to get a break. I went to the gym, took a shower. It was unbelievable.”

“We had sex,” the freckled boy’s parents said, looking startled. “Unplanned. It was like being on acid. We just did it spontaneously. Then we cleaned our kitchen for the first time in a year.” And a lot of other townspeople said a similar thing: that they had used the time to clean, because their homes were filthy.

“That’s probably why your town had all those rats,” the Pied Piper said.

“What rats?” the mayor said.

“The ones I lured away,” the Pied Piper said. “Remember? Yesterday?”

And the townspeople confessed to the Pied Piper that they had such mental fog from parenting stress and sleep deprivation that they were losing the ability to form memories.

“If you don’t remember hiring me,” the Pied Piper said, “then what’s the thousand guilders for?”

“We want you to be our regular babysitter,” the mayor said.

“I don’t think I’m qualified,” the Pied Piper said. “I’m a ratcatcher. I also just tried to murder all your children using magic.”

“O.K., two thousand,” the mayor said. The Pied Piper agreed, and the parents were so happy that they stayed up singing and dancing until 9 P.M.

Most people believe that this story is just a myth. It’s impossible, they say, that the people of Hamelin could have lucked into such an affordable babysitter situation. Because, if you do the math, it works out to, like, fifteen guilders a kid. And he’s luring them out of town, which means they’re getting exercise. And there’s music, too, so it also counts as enrichment.

We’ll never know if the Pied Piper truly came to Hamelin. But if you visit today you will see a stained-glass window depicting two middle-aged parents having unscheduled sex in the afternoon. Some say it really happened. And, if that’s true, who knows? Maybe, just maybe, it could happen still. ♦