Pinewood Derby

Our stake from church sponsored a Pinewood Derby for all of the kids in our area.  Typically, the derby is a cub scout venture, so only boys over the age of 8 get to participate.  This derby was for ALL the children.  Boys and girls of all ages.  That meant Jack got to participate.  He was SO excited.  And here Dad thought he had a few years before he had to start manufacturing derby cars again.  Ha.

Jack looks like he's a big help, no?   

 

The car turned out really neat, as always.

The race itself was a complete mess.  The kids didn't seem to notice, thank goodness.  First of all, it snowed the night before.  The roads were a mess.  People were late.  And let me go off on a little sidebar tangent here about tardiness.  I am not late.  I am on time for everything, and when I deal with other people I expect the same courtesy.  The people in this region are not on time.  EVER.  For anything.  I think they use an appointment or meeting time as merely a suggestion.  It drives me NUTS.  It's rude to be late, and being late makes a person look unorganized and that they don't value the time of the other people involved.  I am angry over late people more than I am angry about anything else.  I've tried since living here to relax my standards on timeliness, but I can't do it.  And to solidify my stand, I read an article on Forbes last week written by top executives of Fortune 500 companies.  The article was written for junior leaders (youth) and was a list of things the execs felt was most important to be successful as an adult.  Guess what the number one thing was on everybody's list?

TIMELINESS!

So after I read that I decided I wasn't going to change my stand on timeliness for these folks around here that think it's OK to be late for everything.  I certainly don't want that to rub off on my kids.  Justice is fearful about timeliness and he freaks out if he thinks he will be late for anything.  I plan to keep it that way.  Rant over.

However, these folks kept true to their late standard with the derby.  It started an hour and 30 minutes late.  It wasn't just the folks running the races, it was the racers as well.  People just didn't show up on time.  It took forever to get the race started.  I was aggravated, and the kids were getting restless.  The derby itself was an absolute mess.

Jack, being a small fry that is sort of oblivious to these things, had a pretty good time.  We didn't stay until the very end, because it was SO LONG.  We stayed until after he raced and then we left.  

Loving the facial expression as he watches the races.

His turn.

He did not win his second race so he didn't get to move on to the finals.  We didn't tell him that.  He was cranky and grouchy because we had been there so long, so we just told him he was awesome and left it at that.   

He claims he had a great time and he hopes they do it again.  

If Jack's happy, I'm happy.