Life Lessons

At our Cub Scout pack meeting tonight, we held a "Raingutter Regatta". Unlike the Pinewood Derby, where Scouts spend months honing their cars to perfection and then race them in a set of runoffs that ultimately leads to a winner, the Raingutter Regatta is low-key. At least, ours is. We were going to do it last month, but it rained, and strangely enough, we couldn't hold a raingutter regatta in the rain. The plan last month was to give each boy his regatta kit (balsa wood, plastic sail, metal keel, plastic rudder) to put together then and there. They'd then all race their boats with an equal amount (or lack thereof) of prep time. But, since the regatta was postponed, the boys took their kits home and had a whole month to work on them. Some of the boys sanded, and primed, and tested, and decorated sails, and they appeared at the meeting tonight with high hopes of puffing their sleek vessels to record-breaking times. And then, there was MY son, who was reminded several times that the pack meeting was approaching and the boat was still in the box. "Later", was his reply, each and every time. This morning, I told him that the pack meeting was tonight, and there likely wouldn't be time to put a boat together that would even stay upright in time for the race. Still, I helped him this afternoon as he dug out the trenches for the rudder and keel and glued them in place. I found some paint for him to dab on the unsanded hull, and I even loaned him my blowdryer so that it would all be dry before the start of the meeting. He was convinced that his boat would be the best; he even named it "the Assassin".
I was helping to time at another raingutter, so I didn't get to watch his race, but his dad told me that his boat kept tipping over. Afterwards, he ran up to me, shoved the boat into my hands, and said "throw this thing away!". But after everyone was done, as we sat in groups by rank and played some games, the other bear leader asked the boys to tell something they had learned at the regatta. When she came to Adam, he said, "I learned that you don't always win." And in the van, on the way home, he said "My boat didn't do too well, did it?" When I asked him why he thought it didn't, he said, "Because I didn't put any time into making it good." TWO good life lessons in one night; THAT'S what I love about Cub Scouts!