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"I have the Cub Scout fathers to thank for our pickle car. After a few years of losing the Pinewood Derby races to cars that seem awfully well made for, say, a seven-year-old to have created, my boys gave up. They couldn&amp;#039;t compete with 40-year-old men with well-stocked workshops, so now they go for the Funniest category instead of the Fastest. Only, I&amp;#039;m not laughing. &amp;quot;Guess what we won!&amp;quot; my nine-year-old exclaimed with mock excitement. He&amp;#039;d just walked in the door after this year&amp;#039;s Pinewood Derby race, a Cub Scouts tradition where the boys fashion their own miniature cars out of wood and then race them down tracks in the school gym. &amp;quot;What?&amp;quot; I answered, afraid to ask. &amp;quot;Nothing!&amp;quot; he and his brother laughed in unison, before putting down their cars\u2014one shaped like a pickle and one like a pack of gum\u2014and going off to play.  Well, that was easier to take than the disappointment of previous Pinewood Derby races when my sons, new to Cub Scouts, learned a valuable life lesson: Some people cheat. Rumor has it that some of the big winners at these races aren&amp;#039;t really the kids but certain dads, who spend more time working on their sons&amp;#039; derby cars than their scouts do. The cars that the scouts make mostly on their own look like something out of The Little Rascals. The cars that the dads &amp;quot;helped&amp;quot; more than a little to make look like something out of a NASCAR prototype lab. And they sometimes win. I&amp;#039;m not saying that every car that won a race is a product of cheating. But even the dads who run the derby must know something&amp;#039;s up, because they created a special category called: &amp;quot;Most Likely Done by Scout.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s like adding a category to the Olympics or Major League Baseball called, &amp;quot;Most Likely Won by Athlete Not Taking Performance Enhancing Drugs.&amp;quot; Hey, wait a minute! That&amp;#039;s a great idea. My boys didn&amp;#039;t win the Funniest category. That went to their friend, Jake, whose Simpsons car, complete with Bart and Homer characters glued on top, won over the judges. It&amp;#039;s not fast, but it is funny. And it&amp;#039;s most likely done by scout. Just as it should be. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a2294/good-grief-012908/?src=shelter_footer>