Pinewood Derby
Shelby’s first pinewood derby was today. It was my first pinewood derby, too.
He made sure that he did every step of the car making process possible by himself. If it was something he could do, he did not let me do it.
He & I chose a design together, taking into account my sawing abilities 
I rough-cut the basic shape with a saw.
He filed it into shape & sanded it. I had started with the filing, but once he saw that he could do it, he took over.
He painted it. He decorated it with stickers
A boy scout cousin & I helped him hew out the space for the weights and glue/screw them in (the back one made it through the race, but fell out afterwards). He also helped Shelby put on the wheels & showed him how to put the graphite stuff on to make them go faster.
Here is his car - it’s a fuzzy picture, but it’s the best one that I got:
He came in last in every heat that he ran. But, he didn’t really seem to care at all. He was so proud of his car & excited about the whole event. The night before, at the weigh-in, the boys before him all had something wrong with their car - weight too high, too low, bad wheel clearance, etc. When Shelby got up there, the man who weighed his told him his car was ‘Perfect’. He beamed.
We went home after the Tigers raced, this afternoon, planning on grabbing some lunch, then going back for the finals. I got grumpy trying to get everyone fed & back on time - talked to both of the little ones about the need for them to help me by listening & doing what I asked them to do (go potty, get shoes on, etc.). And Shelby & I had a nice little ‘discussion’ on the drive there, leaving him grumpy, too. I think that fed his disappointment as we watched the finals, as his back weight fell off, and as he realized that they had, apparently, forgotten to judge for the ‘Car that best shows the Cub Scout spirit’ prize. He knew, looking at the other cars last night at the weigh-in, that he was probably the only scout who followed the rules & did it all himself. He thought that he had a chance at that prize, anyway. So, despite the great sportsmanship & pride earlier in the day, he was a bit subdued on the way home from the finals.
He’s doing OK, now.
But, I know that over the next few days, and as we prepare for next year’s race, he’ll be remembering how the winning cars were, quite obviously, made by boys that had more than just a little help from their parents. He’ll have to decide whether to remain true to the spirit of the race, despite the fact that everyone else seems OK with cheating a bit. Do you stick with what you know is right? Or, do you just do what you can get away with in order to win? I wonder if that’s part of the lesson that the scouts are meant to learn in this event, or if it’s just an unfortunate side effect of the whole thing.
None of he other parents seemed obsessed with winning, but many of them seemed completely oblivious to the fact that it was insanely obvious that they had done the majority of the work on their boy’s cars.
