It's 11:37pm, do you know where your young driver is?

Ahhh, Sunday mornings. Just love that lazy feel as I am sipping the coffee, turning the pages of the paper, and plotting my course of action for the last day of the weekend. No worries, no hangover, and the stress level is nil, that is until the phone rings at precisely 9:00am. I used to love caller ID, letting us know if a tele-marketer is about to rob us of our early morning sanctity. But this morning, Gurnee Village Police was the last thing I expected to see blinking back at me.

Within minutes, there stood the officer at my door. Now a flood of possibilities have entered your mind, I'm sure. As did mine when I first got the call. The minute he mentioned the license plate number of my Mercury, I stiffened. I prayed to God he wasn't going to say the word "accident", or "hospital". You see, that is the car my 16 year old son drives. When he convinced me that there were no reports of injury, he continued. When I heard the words "11:37am" combined with "Jewel" and "4 cartons of eggs", my mind did the math. Phew, I said to myself. He had spent the night at a friends house, and obviously they were really hungry, so just before midnight they went to buy some eggs to make a bunch of omelets. Case closed.

That's it, right? I mean, really, what are the other possibilities? He's a good kid, gets decent grades, works hard to be on the basketball team, and he eats a lot. Sure, they could have settled for a bowl of Lucky Charms, but I mean omelets at midnight, it just doesn't compare. But 4 dozen? Even that is a lot for 3 boys to consume. Then my mind began to consider the possibilities. Just maybe, he was secretly making a carrot cake. I know for a fact that it takes 4 eggs to make one of those, I have to make about 3 or 4 every year. But even if he messed up the first one, and needed a redo, he would still have about 3 dozen left over. That really leaves only one other scenario. Must be getting a jump on Easter for next year. What a good kid.

Long story short, I am not really that naive. Nor is the Jewel employee that wrote down his plate number after witnessing 3 teenage boys buying 4 dozen eggs at midnight on a Saturday during summer vacation. Nor is the 20 year veteran cop who has to go through this same routine EVERY Sunday morning, he tells us. But the cop wasn't looking for a bust. He offered that if indeed mischief had occurred, it was correctable before mischief became criminal. That is, until some car owner calls to say the drying eggs were removing the paint and now becomes property damage. The 16 year old is at this very writing, walking the neighborhood of his buddies house with a bucket of soapy water.

Like I said, he is a good kid. But even good people sometimes make stupid decisions, and it is how we react to those stupid decisions that really defines our character, rather than the act itself. He fessed up, knew what he had to do, and did it. That call could have been a lot worse, I know. A long rope had been extended to the lad when he got his license, but the rope just got a whole lot shorter.