Pinewood Derby *March 20th 2013

Max was really looking forward to his first official pinewood derby race.  Steven had scouts that same night so he kept Sam with him while Else and I watched Max race his car.

Max was so excited about his speed racer car and was sure it would be super fast.  That wasn't the case. He kept coming in last or second to last.  Max was getting very sad about it.  We found out that he was missing grafite on the wheels.  One of his scout friends found his brother to help put some on Max's car.  We thought Max had one more race but he got the graphite on and found out he didn't have any more races.  He was DEVASTATED!  Max started crying when a boy from another ward tried to comfort him.  This sweet boy asked the guy in charge if Max could race his car one more time to see if the graphite helped.  After the closing prayer they did a couple of races and we discovered that the graphite didn't help much.  That actually helped a little because then he wasn't upset he hadn't had the graphite the entire time.  His friend Simon (pictured) did great but we found out later he was using an old car of his dad's.  They had a print out list of the rankings and Max was second to last.  That also cheered him up a bit because he was happy that he wasn't very last.  Secretly I was thankful that he was having to deal with this disappointment.  It's like I told my friend who's son was also having a melt down when he wouldn't win.. "I'd rather him learn to loose now when he's 9 than always win at everything and never know how to deal with disappointment."  Some day a girl will break Max's heart.  Some day he will be fired from a job-embarassed in front of a group of his peers...this was an opportunity for him to learn that he can survive life's disappointments and come out stronger on the other side.