Soapbox

Pinewood Derby

So I’ve got this kid…and the time came, as it does for all Cub Scouts, for his first Pinewood Derby. Anyone who has been or known anyone in scouts knows that this is a big deal.
    He decided to paint his hunk of wood orange with black stripes and call it Tiger.  Of course we waited until nearly the last day to get going on it, but figured hey, how long can it take to paint a car? Give it a day to dry and we’ll be set. Famous last words.
     With great seriousness  Stephen painted the body. During a break in the Superbowl,Ted took it out to the garage to spray it with clear lacquer. When he brought it back in and set it out to dry, I asked why it looked so… whitish.
    . "Humm, I guess the laquer will clear up as it dries." We both stood and stared at it for a while.

     "Ted, it’s not really getting clearer…" He ran out to the garage and got the can, and there on the bottom of the label,  were the words, ‘White Lacquer". Stephen now had himself a white tiger. Or maybe just a really old tiger?
    We stared at each other in horror. I told Ted to get me some 0000 steel wool and distract the kids for a while. First I sanded all the white lacquer off. Then I got out the paint and repainted Stephen’s stripes as exactly as I could,  complete with smears and blotches. The next day it got a coat of clear lacquer and we laughed at our mistake.
    The day after, Ted put the wheels on, but the lacquer was still tacky and the graphite powder he used to lubricate the wheels stuck to the body in big black thumbprints. So I buffed off the car again and touched up the stripes one more time.
    Next, the car got tipped while drying and the glue ran into the wheels so that they wouldn’t even turn. Fortunately we had an extra set of wheels, and at midnight the night before the race, Ted was putting new wheels on.  It was like the keystone cops build a derby car!
    Stephen, through all this, was oblivious to the damage his parents had wrought on his creation. After all our hard work, the least old Tiger could have done was win the stinkin’ race, but of course it didn’t work out that way. Stephen seemed happy, though, and quite proud of his car.
    "This is my car, Tiger." he told everyone.  "I painted it myself!"