{"id":1484,"date":"2016-04-25T14:29:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T14:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/?p=1484"},"modified":"2016-04-25T20:43:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T20:43:21","slug":"28-dad-vs-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/28-dad-vs-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"#28: Dad vs. Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pinewood<\/a><\/p>\n


\nMy brother Jay\u2019s has an adorable son who is nine years old and he has been in the Cub Scouts for a few years now. It\u2019s really a great organization for the kids to get involved with.
\nEvery year the Cub Scouts hold this big event that they call the Pinewood Derby and it\u2019s the highlight of the year for a lot of these young boys.
\nThis is what the Pinewood Derby is all about\u2026
\nEvery scout is supposed to build his own race car.
\nEach kid starts with a block of wood, four wheels and a few nails.
\nAfter the Cub Scouts build their cars they have a competition and the scouts race these cars down a track. The kids go through all these elimination rounds and they have official time clocks and photo finishes\u2026 it\u2019s really a big deal\u2026 and then they give out trophies at the end to all the big winners.
\nMy brother had the day of the big race circled in red on his calendar for months.
\nHis son Jack did great last year, but he just missed out finishing in the money, and my brother was intent on doing better this year.
\nThe week before the race, my brother spent several long nights down at his workbench in his basement of his house\u2026 sometimes late into the early morning hours, like Doctor Frankenstein working on his creature in his laboratory\u2026 carving and sanding smooth the wooden body, making it as aerodynamic as possible\u2026 using all sorts of Dremels and hand tools and power tools\u2026 trying to get the sleek shape just right\u2026 just perfect.
\nMy brother also lowered the car\u2019s center of gravity, delicately filed any slight imperfections from the axles, and then lubricated them in order to reduce drag and friction and increase speed.
\nHe experimented with different designs and distributed the weights in the optimal manner in order to achieve maximum performance.
\nHe carefully painted the body, over which he applied all these cool racing stickers\u2026 and then he sprayed two layers of clear coat over that.
\nHe continually weighed and measured the car to make sure it was still within the acceptable limits, which are strictly enforced, and then he waxed the car one more time to make it extra slick.
\nHis son?
\nHis son didn\u2019t do one thing to help build the car.
\nHe didn\u2019t spend a single minute in the basement working with his father.
\nHe contributed nothing whatsoever to the fabrication of that car.
\nIn fact, the whole time my brother was in the basement busting his ass working on the car, his kid either was sitting on the living room couch playing videogames or was mesmerized in a techno-trance, staring at his iPod.
\nOK, so now it was the day of the races\u2026
\nI went\u2026 and this is what I saw.
\nI saw my nephew and all the other little Cub Scouts, from all the different troops, from all the different towns, all standing around on the sidelines, all throughout the afternoon\u2026 watching a bunch of adults race all of the cars that all of the kids\u2019 fathers had built for all of their little sons.
\nHmmm\u2026
\nWell, wouldn\u2019t you know it, at the end of the day they tallied-up all the times by computer and my little nephew\u2019s car came in second place overall. They held a little ceremony and my nephew was awarded a very nice trophy, so we were all extremely happy for him.
\nAs we were walking out of the big hall, my brother said to me, \u201cYou know, I\u2019m really proud of Jack for coming in second place. That\u2019s quite an accomplishment. There were an awful lot of entrants here today.\u201d
\nAnd I said, \u201cNo, no, no\u2026 Jack didn\u2019t come in second place,\u201d pointing my finger at him, \u201cYOU<\/em><\/span> came in second place!… Jack didn\u2019t have a thing to do with that car.\u201d
\n\u201cWell\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cNo, the truth is, you came in second place to some other kid\u2019s father who also spent most of the week in his basement, at his workbench, building his kid\u2019s race car for him, just like you did.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s when my bother threw his hands up and vented\u2026
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just not fair\u2026. I heard the father of the kid who won is like some kind of scientist or engineer or something\u2026They say he used special alloy axles that he had imported from Europe.\u201d
\n\u201cAre you kidding?\u201d
\n\u201cAm I kidding? The guy built a wind tunnel in his garage for testing! Who the fuck builds his own wind tunnel?\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cNo shit.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, and the prick probably got Mario Andretti or maybe fuckin\u2019 Dale Earnhardt Junior to personally chop down some exotic tree in South America to get rare wood for the car\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cCalm down, Jay.\u201d
\n\u201cNo. Wait until next year! I know what I have to do! You\u2019ll see! I have a few tricks up my sleeve for that bastard! Heh, heh, heh\u2026 \u201d
\nIt\u2019s Alive! The monster\u2026 LIVES!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,23,24,25,32,69,232,233,234,235],"class_list":["post-1484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-paul-dangelo","tag-dangelo","tag-comedy","tag-comedian","tag-comic","tag-paul-dangelo-paul-dangelo-comedy","tag-cub-scouts","tag-pinewood-derby","tag-racing","tag-cars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p614ww-nW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1487,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}