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| Mrs. Jackson when Pinewood box arrives! |
I am a fairly competent woman. Ask anyone. (OK, not anyone. I can provide a pre-approved list.) Give me a challenge and I will rise to it. Need an immediate solution to a problem and I can usually McGyver a workaround. But wave a seemingly benign pinewood derby kit under my nose and I begin to display PTSD symptoms.
For many families, that innocuous block of pine wood is a welcome annual visitor. Research is done seeking aerodynamic superiority. Secrets are guarded about exactly how much graphite to apply – and where. Home workshops’ counters are cleared to make room for this much-anticipated yearly project. Favors are called in from rocket-scientist and engineering friends and relatives. Several kits are purchased, engineered and then track tested in advance. Some dads are so pumped for the experience that they save Junior the effort of doing anything himself. (You know who you are.) My theory on these souls is that they never got the chance to make their own cars back in the day when their dad was ‘helping’ them.
But I would like to shed light on an unsung group of parents who weather the frightening prospect of pinewood derby cars year after year in spite of a complete lack of wherewithal, interest or even supplies. You may not know us by name but you can find us sitting in the last row of the crowd chanting “Not last! Please, not last!” under our breath as our child’s rather rectangular entry wobbles down the track. Few credit the miracle that is the fact that our child has a car with four wheels and a number sticker on it.
From the moment the Cub receives his kit, (“Don’t open it here! Don’t open it here! Didn’t I tell you not to open it here? How many wheels were in the box?”) things start heading south. Aside from not losing every nail, wheel or sticker sheet, our first hurdle is one of proper equipment for the job. My husband and I are not what you would call ‘handy’. I have been known to lean a frame against the wall for months before getting up the nerve to try to hang it. Forget straight, I just pray it doesn’t spring from the wall at an inopportune moment and kill one of my children. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that we do not own the appropriate tools to accomplish this daunting task. Although the pine is considered a ‘softer’ wood, you wouldn’t think so when you attack that darn block with exacto, pocket, or, dare I admit, paring knives. I’ll save you the trouble and tell you that not all saws are created equal either and a bow saw and straight saw are also flummoxed when faced with “the block”. In recent years, scout dads with garage workshops have kindly invited our kind in to assist with the shaping of our cars. I am confident that the offer is purely from a generous spirit. That said, I suspect there is no small entertainment value in watching our bafflement and trepidation as we approach real tools in this daunting setting.
Once shaped, it is time for the sanding stage. Where the heck is the pack of sandpaper I bought last year specifically to round out the edges of our box, I mean car? Come to think of it, where’s the pack from the year before that? Off to the store for more – wish they sold it by the sheet. Some day we are going to happen upon the mother-lode of sandpaper. Maybe we will start a foundation to provide sheets to families who suffer like ours. Once our children wield their piece of sandpaper, the combined patience in our household for sustained sanding is approximately .005 seconds. Enough to remove large splinter hazards but not enough to shape a lean, mean racing machine.
One reason no one is going to waste time sanding is because once past that stage, the best part has arrived. The painting stage of the pinewood derby car is all joy at our house. Every boy has something in mind. Every boy is ready to stand over the carpet with an open jar of paint in one hand and a paint-laden brush in the other. Forget ‘slow and steady’, it’s full steam ahead! I should inject at this point that the paint selection is limited to what is in the house. No shiny, racing-car model paint for us. No sir. It’s leftover craft project tubes in a surprisingly limited palette of non-racecar colors for our gang.
Although the pack offers a weigh-in the night before, we need to use every available moment to finish crafting something that loosely resembles a car. On the actual morning of the event, we slap one final coat on the chassis; attempt to attach number stickers on a wet surface; and race over to the derby to reach the weigh-in before the scale is shut down. Each year we are wowed by the “Baby Bear” vehicles when it comes to weight – you know, “juuuuust right.” Every last hundredth of an ounce can help speed their entry to victory. Wood is bored and weights are planted and epoxy is spread and paint is used for camouflage (I think). Our family has been far too busy painstakingly jamming the wheels on each corner - once four new nails have been acquired, of course (Maybe that’s what making the grinding noise in our disposer?) to worry about something as trivial as weight. Even if we cared, the only scale in our house is a people scale and, if you ask me, it adds an additional five pounds to anyone fool enough to stand on it. But I digress…
So it is anyone’s guess how much our cars weigh before arrival at the big event. Invariably, we are underweight, thank God. There is no way we could lop off anything at that point (see Inappropriate Tool section above)! Helpful souls offer official Pinewood Derby weights; we fumble through pocket lint to scrounge up some nickels; and we get a weight somewhere in the acceptable neighborhood. Unlike the clandestine weights of the pro cars, our sons’ added weights are precariously glued atop their entries like so many unfortunate tumors.
And now there’s nothing left but the crying. Although my husband and I (and every other soul in that gymnasium) recognizes that my sons’ cars are more likely to fly about the room than win even one heat, no one has the heart to break the news to them. Not even history is enough to deflate the balloon of hope that drifts after my boys. Fortunately, we are not alone in our incompetence/disinterest and each of our sons’ will have at least a few finishes that are not dead last. Invariably, our boys do not need to stick around for the final heats and that is a blessing on a busy Saturday in Winter. We collect their cars and head out.
You might ask, “If the experience is so painful, why keep doing it?” And, the answer, my friend is simple. What is Cub Scouts if not an ongoing opportunity for character building? Once reality sets in, the derby provides an excellent opportunity to let your boy cheer others on, express admiration for the skills of friends, and learn the difficult lesson of losing graciously. And, of course, the other Cub Scout take-away? The memories. I can already hear them reminiscing with a grin when the pinewood derby box comes home in the sweaty palm of their son many years from now.
And when the latest year’s derby is long gone, it warms my heart to see each and every one of my sons’ somewhat sad entries proudly displayed on their dressers and taken out for a spin every now and again.
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