You’ve heard the wise, old saying, Tell a teenager to slow down and they’ll be sure and get a speeding ticket. Or Give a teenager a curfew and they’ll give you twenty thousand elaborate reasons why they're late. Or my newest, favorite, “Tell a teenager their junior year is the most critical for grades and college admissions and they’ll do their darndest to mess it up.”
No amount of threats, restrictions, bribes, or bets seemed to keep our daughter’s grades from slipping. So what’s a parent to do? It may be as simple as building a mousetrap car. A mousetrap car is a physics project assigned on the first day of school and usually due only a few short hours after your kid begins building it. A mousetrap car is what I refer to as a teacher’s "passive aggressive" project. It’s one of those projects they dream up to get back at us, I mean, to thank us, for the pleasure of teaching our children.
A handful of students will be excited about such a project and not only possess the capability to build it on their own, but improve it. The rest of the class will require some assistance, most likely in the form of a dad. Of course, in many homes a mom works just as well, but if a project has anything to do with mice, I’ll gladly let Ward take the lead and provide cold drinks and snacks while wearing my best June Cleaver smile.
So, after my daughter’s failed, solo attempt to prove the basic propulsion theory with a mousetrap that propelled, I propelled her father. Today’s parents have little time to relax in the evenings. If it isn’t a project, there’s a basketball game to coach, or a Boy Scout meeting to attend. To my husband’s credit, he didn’t ask all the usual questions, “How long have you know about this?” “Why didn’t you begin a month ago?” “Why don’t you ask your teacher?”
Instead, he sat down and began to help. It took a trip to the hardware store, a few trips to the basement where I heard some pounding, some sawing and I think some crying. Then back to the kitchen, where with heads bowed together, they murmured and mumbled over some scraps of wood, pencils, string, computer discs and of course, the dreaded mousetrap. The contraption was supposed to move seven meters. According to the directions, I glazed over, the mousetrap must be located the right distance from the drive axle to allow enough force to propel the car forward.