Tigre the Tyson

The title of the post might be confusing but that was the name of Tyson's car for the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby. Originally he named it Shark T but later wanted to change it to Tyson the Tiger except that he wrote the words in the wrong order... and misspelled tiger (depending on where you're from)... so it ended up being named Tigre the Tyson. Anything is better than what he named his boat for the Raingutter Regatta.

After four races (your car runs on each lane of the track), an average of the times are taken to determine the standings. In his age group (Tigers), he placed third and moved on to the grand finals which included the whole pack (Tigers, Bears, Wolves and Webelos), i.e. competing with all of the older kids. Looking at the times of the other groups compared to Tyson's, he didn't stand a chance. Hindsight being 20/20, we should've left after he was done. But no, we waited around for about an hour so that he can race his car in the grand finals. And to no one's surprise, he got dead last... and it wasn't even close. He was bummed out. He didn't cry or anything but got really quiet. It was sad.

But would not participating in the grand finals be the best move? Or was it good that he experienced that losing feeling? I'm a little torn on this because I do think everyone should know how it feels to lose (and how do you bounce back from a lost) but in this case, it was utter destruction. He was thrown to the lions. I don't know. I don't know what the best parenting move would have been. But I felt bad for him.