Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
There was a time when I was very competitive. So much so, I was banned from playing board games by family members. Some might call it cheating. My six-year-old daughter caught me numerous times. For example: Chutes and Ladders and Candyland. When I got caught, I told her I did it to see if she could catch me.
Then there were the team sports like baseball and basketball. I would hug the plate which forced the pitcher to either hit me or throw it wide for a ball. I got struck a lot. In basketball, I would set illegal picks. What that does, is cause the player on the opposing team to take off on the fly to cover his man. If a teammate doesn’t call out the pick, most of the time the player runs into you and gets called for a foul. I also used a move called a “flop.” A term for an exaggerated fall or stagger in order to draw a called foul on an opposing player.
I have always liked to think of myself as a trickster rather than a cheat. Trickster sounds like prankster; cheat sounds like it’s supposed to sound. That’s not to say I haven’t tried to gain an unfair advantage a time or two. My son belonged to a Cub Scout troop. Maybe they call it a pack. Each year his fellow scouts would have this event called Pinewood Derby. You purchase a kit that has in it a block of wood, four stainless steel nails that serve as axles, four wheels, and you design a car from the contents. The intent of the Derby is to have the parent and son work on it together as a team. The block of wood is cut, carved, sanded, painted and turned into something that resembles a racer.
Most of the time the kid ends up getting angry at the parent because the adult wants to do it his or her way. The kid storms off angrily, which causes the adult to lash out at the child.
“Okay, you do it!”
The parent then gets pissed and walks away. One of several things usually follows. The kid comes back some time later and finishes the project; the project never gets completed, or the kid gives up on it altogether and it becomes the parent’s project. With my son Michael, he simply got bored with it.
The downside to the parent taking over the project is that the construction and race turns into an adult competition. We always strive to teach our children honesty and serve as an exemplary adult role model. My father wasn’t around much to teach me that sacred tenet. My mother made sure that the “will to win” was well engrained in my young male psyche. Some boys embrace the competitive spirit like my older son, who became quite the high school jock. Others like my middle son the Cub Scout, preferred to play with his Lego.
Michael was a slightly above-average student with an over-the-top imagination. His expertise was engineering interstellar spacecraft with rectangular plastic. With each design, he would build an escape pod that attached to the mother ship. In Michael’s mind, you never knew when you would have to haul ass in a hurry. As Michael matured into a man, this would be his life modus operandi. His escape pods became Plan “A,” “B” and “C.” Sometimes, he had a back-up plan to a back-up plan.
I was convinced that Michael was going to become our family’s first engineer or architect. I was wrong on both counts. Michael had a talent he didn’t even know he had—he could act and sing. In fact, he was so good that he was offered a vocal scholarship to Indiana University’s prestigious School of Music. The performance that garnered him the most attention and paved the way for the scholarship, was the lead role of a play where he performed his part in sign language. This was about the time I disappeared from his life for several years when I left his mom and my family for another woman.
During his senior year of high school, I saw him in one production where he played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He didn’t know I was there. At curtains, he got enthusiastic applause from the packed house and I left for the three-hour drive back to Indianapolis. Michael accepted the scholarship offer to IU and eventually left the program. It’s a subject I’ve never discussed with him and one I’m sure he would rather avoid.
At some juncture Michael fell in love with a girl who would later become his wife and then his ex-wife. Later on, when they were boyfriend and girlfriend, she went to live with her mother, and Michael came to live with me and the woman I left his mother for. During that month, we learned to forgive. He discovered I was still dad and my now wife was not the ogre she had been portrayed to be. During his stay, Michael learned as adults we have flaws; some fatal, and others we learn to correct.
Michael eventually got himself together and got his own apartment. Such as it is in life, once you think everything is going your way, setbacks are bound to occur. For Michael, it was financial. Working part-time at Burger King wasn’t cutting it. Seeing no recourse, he told me he was going to join the Air Force. Michael aced the entrance exam, and the recruiter gave him a binder three-inches thick. “Choose what you want.” Michael became an instrument technician. When the recruiter somehow learned of Michael’s singing ability, he urged him to choose the Air Force Choir.
“You can live the life during your four years. Travel the world. Fly on the best aircraft from place to place and eat the best food. Sing before audiences composed of dignitaries and, senior officers, and….”
Michael cut him off. “Not interested.” Whatever happened in the past had tainted his desire to sing and perform.
About halfway through his enlistment, one of Michael’s military colleagues retired and approached Michael about coming to work for him. There was one significant problem—Michael had two years left in his enlistment. It was in Tucson, Arizona, where he and I concocted a plan to get him out of the military. It called for him to gain weight and flunk his annual fitness exam. After successive attempts to pass the evaluation and failing, the Air Force opted to discharge him. The medical officer wanted to give him a General Discharge. That’s something just a notch above a Dishonorable Discharge. In short, you don’t want it on your record. Although the medical officer suspected Michael’s ruse, the Air Force with its thousands of policies and directives didn’t have one in place that addressed our conceived ploy, and he was granted an Honorable Discharge. To prevent further schemes, the Air Force now gives a General Discharge if an airman can’t pass the physical evaluation. Michael left the Air Force and went to work with his ex-military associate. The weight he packed on was gone in four months.
I would like to think that the success of our strategy started with the Pinewood Derby many years before, but not so. What Michael started in our basement, I finished. After he got bored and walked away from his design, that was when dad stepped in and did a not so simple modification. Pinewood Derby rules state that contestants can add weight to their design as long as they don’t exceed the five-ounce weight limitation. The key is, get as close to the five-ounce weight restriction as possible. Some contestants tape nickels to their respective designs to accomplish that. Bulk adds weight, adds momentum, equals advantage. By Pinewood Derby rules, it’s legitimate. There was also no Pinewood Derby rule that stated contestants couldn’t use mercury. It too has weight.
Mercury is a silvery dense metallic liquid commonly used in thermometers, thermostats and switches. It’s also considered toxic to the human nervous system. When liquid mercury is spilled, it forms droplets that can accumulate in the tiniest spaces and emit vapors into the air. If ingested through the skin or inhaled, it can be dangerous.
I cut the racer in half with a precision blade saber saw. I then hollowed out a section of the racer to allocate for a mercury switch. Shaped like an hour-glass, the encapsulated mercury flows from one end to the other when placed on an incline or slope. The switch only weighed 5 grams, the same as a nickel, but it’s not the weight of the mercury that gives the racer the edge. It’s when the mercury switch dips forward—it gives the racer an extra boost from the starting line. To accomplish the desired “catapult effect,” it was crucial for me to place the switch as close to the front axle as possible. Before piecing the racer back together, I had to assure that the switch could pivot back and forth internally without getting hung-up. After I placed the two shaped halves together, I scuffed the plastic wheels with sandpaper to gain increased traction, and lubricated the nail axles with graphite. I then coerced Michael into painting the racer with his favorite color—black.
Finally, race day was upon us. As the Cub Scout entrants displayed their cars on a table that resembled an elongated pit-stop, I gazed at the 1st Place trophy wondering where it would look best perched in our house. You can tell what kids made their own racers. They hovered over their creations and talked enthusiastically about what went into their development. The other group, comprising parents like me, pored over the competition. Which racer would provide the most difficult challenge?
Prior to the scoutmaster lining up the cars four abreast at the starting line, each racer was weighed to assure that it did not exceed the five-ounce weight limit. This gave the event a feel of a thoroughbred Stakes race, or boxing bout. The time was upon us, but not before the Cubs recited their Cub Scout Promise.
“I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people and, to obey the law of the pack.” In 2015, the Cub Scout Promise became the Scout Oath. The first line was changed from, “I promise to do my best,” to “On my honor I will do my best.”
Tension filled the air. I feared blood-letting. Michael’s car was in the first heat. The scoutmaster pulled down on the starting gate lever and the cars propelled down the ramp. That is, except for Michael’s. Somehow the mercury switch I had so deviously installed, instead of dipping forward, dipped backward which created drag. The drag was so severe, his car stopped a foot short of the finish line.
The scoutmaster congratulated the first-heat winner and gave Michael a sympathetic pat on the back. Parents exhibited pained expressions and Michael retrieved his racer, oblivious to what was going on around him. If Michael looked around for me, I wouldn’t know. I had already left the building.
Stuart Baker Hawk is a Washington state resident, via Indiana, via all parts all over. His day job is in risk management and is also an MFA candidate in creative writing at Mississippi University for Women.
