And The Procrastination Prize Goes To...

So I thought I would go ahead and honor the daily blogging duties early since it is Saturday night and the kids will be with the grandparents. I expect to let my hair down a little (I might even find the time to wash it!). If I waited until much later to write, it is entirely possible that today's posting would be some ridiculous alcohol induced rant about my current theories about "Lost" or my negative opinion of low-fat food. Allow me to spare you the fate.

Today was the Boy Scout Pine Wood Derby. I spent the better part of my day in the basement of a church watching wooden cars roll down a sloped track over and over and over. I hear Di Vinci did this type of thing for fun and to that I say, what a dork. I watched as much Mr. Wizard as the next kid but I seem to have been shorted the interest in physical science that so many of the parents in my company seemed to have in such massive supply today. Sam was born into an "artsy" family. In other words, his parents suck at math and science and can barely help him with his homework let alone help him design a 6 inch vehicle. I can help him paint it or give it a cool name...I know, poor kid.

For those of you unfamiliar with the event, the boys are given a block of wood and four wheels and sent off to make a car to race in about a month. There are all kinds of rules that determine what kind of car you'll return with but we don't worry too much about these since we are just pretty happy if it actually rolls by the time we're done.

Last year, my husband, Ray, waited until the morning of the race to make the car. I was irritated (but no more than usual) and prodded him to sit down with our son Sam to produce a car quickly enough that he might participate. We arrived at the race and happily presented Sam's little car. We were happy until we saw some of the other cars. Honestly, some of them looked like NASA engineers had designed them. We braced ourselves for the worst. But amidst all of our underachiever dread the strangest thing happened, Sam won.

So this year, we decided to just do our best to replicate what was done last year. For me this meant trying to emulate the structure of the first car, for Ray this meant putting everything off until race day again. I launched into a whole tirade about poor little Sam missing out on the skills, science learning, work ethic opportunities and father son bonding as a result of the procrastination to the point that Ray was calling any of our friends and neighbors that had ever built a birdhouse to help us help Sam build this little car. The Federal Government does not have as many checks and balances as this little wooden car went through this morning. We were feeling pretty confident as we walked in. It lost in the first round. Sam didn't really care either way, he was just having fun watching the cars roll down a hill.

What's the lesson here? I have no idea. Unless, maybe Ray and I don't have to be the ones to teach Sam everything. Maybe he doesn't need to learn all of that stuff yet. Maybe he just needs to have some fun watching a block of wood with wheels roll. Maybe sometimes winging it works just fine.