Pinewood Derby Day

For the past 6 years I have marked this day on my calendar, prepared myself as much as possible, but still come up short in terms of acceptance.  It’s Pinewood Derby Day.  The annual event wherein dad’s spend countless hours faking their best Bob Villa under the guise of ‘helping’ their sons and daughters build a wooden car that will spend less than 60 seconds of total time actually doing anything even remotely considered moving.

Still, they enjoy it and that’s what matters.  This year, Ian Michael opted out (he’s 12) and so it was just Zachary and me.  For the past few weeks he has been working on it, culminating in The Cheetah, a psychedelic hot rod with all the trimmings.  This baby was made to race, yessir! 

So from 8am until 2pm today, we raced and sat and watched other races, and ate junk food.  Fortunately, the church has WiFi and so I was able to spend some quality time working on some projects and generally browsing the ‘net.  It meant a lot to Zachary to be there with his friends, and it meant a lot to me that he wanted me there too.

At the end of the day, he didn’t win a race but did get 3rd place for Most Original.  I think he may have been one of the few 1st graders that actually did most of the work himself (hence the paint job).  I was proud of him, and he had a big smile all day long.