Egg Dropping

When I was in junior high, we dropped eggs from the roof of our school for a science project. The point of the exercise wasn't to observe splash patterns of eggs breaking on concrete, we were given the task of creating a safe way for our eggs to travel from the roof to the ground. My dad helped me create my egg carrier with a box, toothpicks and rubber bands. Dad was an aeronautical engineer, I had no doubt my egg would survive. It did. 

The other day, in a round about way, I was reminded of this egg drop project. My son, Taylor, woke me up from a sound if short sleep to inform me his iphone had been stolen. Taylor lives at home and commutes to a college campus in the heart of Pittsburgh. On Monday nights, he has a night class and takes the bus home afterwards. It has always made me nervous thinking about my little boy (he's about to turn 20) coming home late at night (9:30) on the bus. The bus stop is just a few blocks from campus and he only has to take one bus to reach our neighbor. The first night he did this I waited up for him and worried the entire time he would miss his bus and be stuck in town all night long.

This week while he waited for the bus, two young men approached him. They chatted with him for a minute and then asked if one of them could use his phone to call his mom. It wasn't long before the phone and one of the young men were running down the street. Taylor started to follow but wisely came to the decision that the phone was a loss and it wasn't worth risking anything else. He tells his side of the story well in his blog. And so he came home woke up his old mom (I obviously stopped waiting up for him) so we could suspend service on his line. I will admit, I wasn't very happy with my kind-hearted son that evening.  I really wanted to smack the boy upside the head. 

And I realized that parenting young adult children is alot like the egg drop experiment. You do your best to prepare and protect your "egg" but when they drop off the roof, you can't do anything else to keep it safe. If it's going to crack, it's going to crack. And I'm not sure I like this feeling.

Photo credit

In the end, I am proud of my little boy egg who looks to help others rather than protect his possessions. Mostly, I'm glad he came home with no cracks and not missing any yolk.