Rose Would Survive ....

She and her gang are going on an extended camping trip to celebrate graduating.

As they will be some distance from civilization, Tom required a plan before approving this venture, which the two Eagle scouts running the trip provided. All was well and we approved.

However, thanks to our modern day and age, I have seen trailers for too many horror movies where the innocent band of campers is set upon by monsters/zombies/aliens ... or my worst fear ... a crazed person ... and mayhem ensues.

Worse still, some time ago Tom told me all about a book by a Texas ranger in which that sort of thing actually happened.

Now, intellectually I know that these sorts of incidents are as scarce as hens' teeth. However, as a mother I have this nagging worry.

I try to relax. I try to let it go. I pray and turn it over to God ... and then find myself with that nagging worry again.

So I told Rose about it. She began laughing and said, "Well if it makes you feel better, I would be the person who survives."

I asked how she thought that would be.

She said, "Well, I have the bad back and so would have the most difficult time getting away. That would make the most interesting story line and so I would survive."

We both laughed merrily. I said, "If only real life happened like movie plots."

"Oh it does," she said. "Debbie is blonde so she'd go first ... Thomas might also survive because he's so smart that he'd do some McGyver-like thing to stop the killer. Unless he felt he needed to sacrifice himself to save the rest of us."

"And I like that he would sacrifice himself if that was absolutely needed to save the others," I said.

"Oh, he would," she replied.

Funny. But now I do feel better.

Postscript
Speaking of Thomas, he is a brilliant kid. Not only did he do award-winning research on nuons when he was a sophomore, but he then went on to do further research and will have a paper published on it next month. Harvard came asking him to attend their school. He turned down Stanford because they have a strict policy on not letting undergrads do research. I think they'll be sorry later. Notre Dame is quite happy to let Thomas into their labs when he gets there later this fall. He'll be majoring in Latin and physics.

The thing I like about Thomas is his ability to evaluate facts and make up his own mind. He turned down Cal-Tech and chose Notre Dame because he felt a broad education was wiser. He has been evaluating political policies on some of the issues that are most important to him (nuclear energy, etc.) and recently did an about-face on long-held political allegiances based on his findings. That shows the true scientific spirit, I believe, and I honor him for it.

He was the valedictorian of Rose's class and, as is the tradition, he selected his favorite teacher to speak about him. He chose Sister Cecilia who is a brilliant and honored scientist in her own right. It is from her speech that I got many of the details I just mentioned. Thomas is a frequent visitor with all of Rose's friends, but he doesn't talk about himself. She mentioned that he met Stephen Hawking a few weeks ago. Naturally Thomas was quite honored to meet the most famous scientist of our day. Sister reflected that her thought was that it was perhaps an unknown honor for Hawking as well to meet someone who may well become his successor in scientific achievement. Sister does not give out praise lightly and that added to the impact of her comments. I agree.