Life's Ups. And Ups, and ups, and ups

It seems my son may have an engineering bent. He loves building things that go: things that roll, and float, and fly.  This weekend he spent painstaking time assembling an lightweight Styrofoam airplane that he had received from a classmate for his birthday. A gift from a Chinese boy and made in China, it featured a battery powered motor and Ev was beside himself waiting for a first flight.

Walking down the sidewalks of Chicago to the school with the big open field, he literally skipped along, holding his big plane up. People would comment: “Wow, nice plane!”  “Thanks! I built it myself! It has an electric motor.” His joy and excitement and pride were obvious and uncontainable.

First attempt at flight the plane went down into the grass within just a few feet. Anxious to demonstrate proper technique, I retrieved the plane, started the motor, and gave it a firm thrust into the breeze. Wow!! The plane took off like rocket. It circled back and then climbed. Circled back a little less and climbed some more. Did I mention there was a slight breeze? It circled and climbed some more. This was great! And then I started to realize the plane was getting pretty high, going pretty far, nearing the fenced boundary of our big field. I really began to feel an urgent awareness of the fact that this battery powered Styrofoam airplane that appeared to have every intention of leaving the perimeter, climbing over a road filled with traffic, and heading toward power lines, had absolutely no means of control.

Poor Evan. What had first been a laughingly exciting first flight was rapidly turning into a nightmare: a nightmare filled with the potential for property damage and personal injury as well as loss of an extremely well-loved electric motor powered airplane. "It's from China! I can never replace it!"

The good news: The plane continued to climb. It cleared the power lines and did not drop from 50 feet onto the hood of someone’s nice vehicle. No pedestrians were injured. At least not to our knowledge.

The bad news: There was an explosion of tears and sadness as the plane cleared the roof of the school about 200 yards away across the street and disappeared from sight. A search of the perimeter found no remains of the Falcon or any evidence of accident or injury.

Poor Ev: He choked over tears and sobs to ask, "Dad! Why are you laughing?!!"