The Pinewood Derby As Predictor Of Future Success

by Paul Shirley

As a pre-teen growing up in a mostly-rural section of a mostly-rural state, my life was dominated by activities the rest of humanity now view as disgustingly quaint. I played Little League. I was in 4-H. And I was a Cub Scout.

Scouting had few attractive aspects. Meetings were never fun – I remember being terrified that I would screw up the flag presentation that kicked off the proceedings each week. And I never could figure out why we were so worried about snakebites; our meetings were in the basement of a Methodist church.

Outings were even less pleasant, especially because they usually involved fund-raising, in the form of bowling pledges and popcorn sales.

But there were occasional highlights. One of them was the Pinewood Derby.

For the uninitiated, the Pinewood Derby is a race among crafted and painted wooden cars of the five-ounce variety. Scouts are given identical kits that include a plain block of pine – pre-modified only by grooves for the nails that serve as axles – and four unattached tiny plastic wheels. In theory, an attractive and speedy wooden vehicle will be hewn from these modest beginnings.

hot dog pinewood derby

Winning is, of course, not the point of the Pinewood Derby. The point of the Pinewood Derby is the father-son (or mother-son, in more modern Packs) interaction: the learning of woodworking, of paint-application, and most important, of conflict resolution, after the son in question decides his car won’t be complete without an olive-green plastic army man (mortar included) glued to the top.

My entries into the Pinewood Derby were always respectable, both in form and function. And fittingly, their evolution reflected my own. As a new Cub Scout (I believe the term was “Bobcat”), my car was little more than a painted wedge. By my final year, my car had taken on exotic qualities – headlights made from push pins, paint that was creatively weathered, and half-ounce slugs of lead melted into the car’s base.

But thankfully, my cars were never too good. They never looked too well-made, because my father exercised restraint as we worked on my car. That is: He actually let me do some of the work, even though, I’m sure, he wanted to push me to the ground so he could take over the carpentry. The urge toward violence is inherent to woodworking with an 8-12 year-old.

Not all of my fellow Scouts were so lucky. I didn’t realize it at the time, but one could have divined much from those Pinewood Derby cars. Predicted the future, even.

The beginning of every Pinewood Derby was marked by a weigh-in. As my fellow Scouts and I waited in line by the spring scale, we watched nervously as cars that had been painstakingly crafted over the previous 3 weeks were torn to shreds in an effort to make weight. Quarters that had been painted into the décor were torn off. Washers were glued on. With the aid of the sawblade of a Swiss Army Knife, hatchbacks were made into El Caminos.

Once the first hurdle was cleared, a respite: every car was displayed in the north end of the elementary school gym, so participants could ogle the efforts of their fellow Scouts.

Mothers would exclaim at the creative genius of the Oscar Meyer Weiner Dog Car, while boys would snicker at the same craft, all thinking the same thing: “At least I won’t have to worry about that one beating me.” We may have been young, but we were not without at least a rudimentary grasp of the concept of “drag”.

Soon, we’d find seats on the wooden bleachers of the hosting elementary school and watch the proceedings. We were nervous about how our cars would do, and hoped our weeks of effort would be proven worthwhile. Our nerves bundled tightly, we watched as some of our cars won and some of our cars lost. That winning and losing had more to do with freakish chance and fortuitous lane assignments than it did with wind resistance, potential energy, and graphite-application. There’s only so much you can do to make a quarter-pound piece of wood travel faster down a 25-foot track.

Meanwhile, there was another form of winning and losing going on.

Before his race, each boy would walk to the display table, pick up his car, and take it to the track that was placed prominently at half-court of the too-short gym where, on Tuesdays and Fridays during the winter, JV basketball games would be contested.

That moment – when the boys picked up their cars – was when, if we’d been paying attention, we could have seen the future.

There’s one now: He’s eight, and his car looks like it was designed by a chassis engineer at Lamborghini. The paint fades gradually, exquisitely, from blue to red, in honor of his favorite collegiate sports team, the Kansas Jayhawks. The curves on his car’s body are smooth, sanded as they’ve been by a Drimel tool and a piece of oil cloth.

All is well in the world of boyhood activities, until we in the audience realize the meaning of the perfection we’re seeing. This eight year old’s fate is sealed: he’s got overbearing parents. His future holds a trip to the University of Kansas, the start of a curriculum in pre-law (because that’s what his dad did), and, eventually, thirty years of the wrong job, a bad marriage and, if he’s lucky, a heart attack at 55.

All because his parents couldn’t let him make his own mistakes. His Pinewood Derby car is so perfect that, even if it wins, it loses.

Wait. There’s another one. He’s eleven. His eyes shift under hooded lids as he sheepishly picks up his car which, unlike what his alcoholic father said, does not look like everyone else’s. The father had made his assured statement 18 hours before the Derby, when his wife had finally badgered him into helping his son with his car. Tired from the previous night, most of which had been spent shooting pool at the Oasis Bar & Grill, he’d sighed, gruffly, and reluctantly agreed to help.

The two had retired to the garage, where the father cleared off a square foot of space on the work bench, which was really a door spanning a broken-down stove and a remarkably pristine sawhorse. After a futile search for the right tools, several more heavy sighs, and twenty minutes of hopeful silence on the part of the son, a light bulb had gone off in the father’s head.

Which is why we’re watching an eleven year old boy trudge to the head of the track carrying a car that is exactly the same shape as it came out of the box. The only differences: the wheels are attached (although imperfectly) and its body is now a dark shade of brown, the same brown, incidentally, as the garage door that is already peeling after the single coat it got last fall.

The two boys aren’t alone. There are other outliers on the Pinewood Derby bell curve. But unlike the outliers on any IQ graph, this one has failures on both ends.

Of course, these boys aren’t failures yet. Right now, they’re just…boys. They’ll try mightily to overcome their pasts and their over- or under-bearing parents. And some of them will.

But the others, including Eight – he of the wooden masterpiece – and Eleven – he of the wooden disaster – will always struggle. They won’t have a hard time because of the Pinewood Derby; the race is merely a manifestation of a greater tragedy.

The rest of us were luckier. The mediocrity of our cars was a sign that our parents had passed another test. Other tests had been administered at the drop-off for kindergarten, at the playground on the weekend, and in the gym at the YMCA. Our parents had passed in varied ways. Those who had resisted the urge to do too much hadn’t clung too long, hadn’t watched too intently, or hadn’t coached from the sidelines. And those that had resisted doing too little had stayed till the bell, had watched an extra trip down the slide, or had decided, at the last minute, not to let their child wear jeans to the first day of basketball practice.

None of these “passes” meant that we had won. Not yet. Our parents had other tests waiting for them. And we had tests of our own, waiting for us.

Just like the playground or the first day of school, the Pinewood Derby didn’t declare winners. Sure, medals were awarded and backslaps were given, but their recipients weren’t necessarily victors. We didn’t know it at the time, but the only definitive grades the Pinewood Derby gave out were failing ones. The only real predictions that were made were of the ominous variety.

I am not a parent. Not yet, maybe not ever. (Remember the mention of Little League? I took a lot of groundballs off the crotch.) If my turn on the parenting merry-go-round ever comes, I hope that I’ll be wise enough to let my children understand that, sometimes, you can win by losing.

Especially at the Pinewood Derby.

Article Courtesy of Paul Shirley

at http://www.flipcollective.com/paul-shirley/

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