By Rick Kaempfer
When our first boy Tommy was born, we were still in the delivery room when a vision flashed through my mind.
I was picturing my father, the engineer, painstakingly designing, weighing, and painting my Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car. Whenever I came near the car during his two week construction project, I was told not to touch it. He wouldn’t even let me look at it. As I looked down at my own little boy, I was overwhelmed with emotion.
The emotion was pity.
“This kid is screwed for the Pinewood Derby,” I said to Bridget.
She thought I was kidding, but in the days leading up to Tommy’s first Pinewood Derby seven years later, Bridget began to understand the gravity of my delivery room prediction.
While the other Cub Scout fathers were talking about aerodynamics, design, and preliminary sketches, I was staring at a block of wood and sweating. While the other Cub Scout fathers were talking about chisels, routers, and coping saws, I was coping with a nervous breakdown. My family doesn’t even allow me to carve the Thanksgiving turkey, but I was supposed to carve a car out of a block of wood? Are you kidding me? I can barely construct a paragraph. I can barely make a sandwich. I couldn’t fix a Chicago parking ticket if my last name was Daley.
To me, the most tragic part of the story was that the man who deserved community derision for his lack of traditional fathering skills (me) wasn’t going to be the victim. No sir. When that chunk of wood didn’t leave the starting gates, they weren’t going to call out my name to retrieve the car. They were going to call out Tommy’s.
I could picture that moment as clear as day when they handed me the Pinewood Derby box.
Bridget sensed I was a little stressed out about this whole thing. I don’t know if it was the sight of me curled up in a little ball that tipped her off, or whether it was my constant murmuring “I’m so sorry, Tommy. I’m so sorry, Tommy,” but she was like a guardian angel when she said the words that would change my parenting life forever.
“Could you use a little help?” she asked.
Could Joan of Arc have used a hose?
That’s when my own personal Joan of Arc took over. She got out the wood-thingy tools. She called her friends’ husbands and got tips for how to install the weights. She included Tommy in the process so he wouldn’t turn out like his own father. And when the two of them were done, they had created a totally satisfactory car.
She even brought along tools to Pinewood Derby night to make last second alterations if necessary. A few of the fathers commented to me about how good the car looked.
“I can’t take credit for it,” I said. “Bridget and Tommy made it.”
That was met with howls of laughter because they thought I was kidding. When they found out I wasn’t, it was met with slack-jawed disgust.
I didn’t care about their derision. I was just happy that Tommy’s car didn’t embarrass him. That horrible moment I feared never occurred.
Since that day, we’ve been to four Pinewood Derbies, and we’re going to another one this weekend. Last year my second son Johnny even won a prize for best design.
I still haven’t learned how to make one of those cars, but I have learned one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: I have the best wife in the world.
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