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This is me Nancy, at the time we were sightseeing from a
boat in New York
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For me, that moment of "buy-in" was [almost] priceless.
It was longed for, because I already had a feeling that Shey and I would be spending a lot of time in the future racing, but to be completely honest, it was a little unexpected.
Well, unexpected or not, the desired outcome was gained, and we then had an entire family unit who were more than happy (actually I'm not sure we were more than happy, perhaps we should just settle on the notion that we were at least happy) to spend a few hours in the evening constructing a race track, racing each other, and taking it in turns dancing around the lounge waving our hands in the air and chanting "I am the winner" whilst taking great delight in the exercise of finger pointing to punctuate the stucatto of "and you are the loosers, ner ner, ner ner ner!"
I was not particularly good, bearing in mind that I'd not actually partaken in slot-car racing since being a pre-adolescent youth, but I was better than a three year old (who had never done it at all before), and Nancy; so it should be needless to say that I was mostly the individual prancing around the room mocking those who could not beat me -did I mention that I'm a terrible winner, and an even worse loser? Let's take that as written from this moment on.
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That's me that is, posing in front of the mirror
(in the WC at work), for your pleasure.
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So, now you are better equipped to imagine this fully grown man taunting (yes taunting) his fellow family members; and if your imagination does not paint a pretty picture, believe me, you would not like to be there in the flesh!
The point that I was trying to get around to making is this ... Shey, being a three year old, didn't quite understand who was winning and who was losing, especially since I had set the fantastic digital controller thing-a-ma-jig so that the race would end as soon as all cars behind the winning car had crossed the line. To him and his wonderfully innocent mind (I was going to say "child-like" but that would just be stupid, since after all, he is not like a child, he is a child!), the race ended when he crossed the line which obviously meant that he was the winner. Therefore he took great offence to my taunting. I had to get creative with the race positions -remember the bit that we have to take as written? Well you should not be surprised then to learn that I could not simply say "Yes Shey, you won"; it would have gone against everything I stand for -as an aside, I am so glad that I am not my father, and I don't just mean that from a paradoxical standpoint!
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Stop opening the new pieces of track and say cheese will you
child!
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Just look at that face -------->
Even I, as heartless as I am, find it painful to see him cry, especially at something as low down on the "meaningful scale" as losing a Scalextric race. So, with my incredible aptitude for ingenuity and general cleverness, the next time Shey declared "I'm the winner", I said ... "Yes you are winner number two, and daddy is winner number one!"
What a stroke of genius: I enabled my son to believe that he was the winner, whilst also being true to my values. I did not lie to him, and I certainly did not concede defeat in the absence of it [erm, tongue in cheek guys and gals, tongue in cheek].
Please find below a series of photographs depicting several of our first track designs, displayed here in no particular order ...
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| I think this was our first attempt at sneaky |
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| Hairpin bend and a jump on the straight |
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| Slight variation on the above |
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Hairpin bend to gain elevation, it's all about
fitting as much track into as little space as
possible
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