When a loser is also a winner!

Is winning the only thing?

Do people only remember the winners?

At our family reunion camp up in Itasca State Park, the games began. The young parents and their children had been bicycling and hiking and now came the competition at Bean Bag Toss.

OK, sounds wimpy but that’s why I signed up for it!

And you should have heard the cheers as relatives rooted for their cousins or aunts and uncles. The small tykes got to stand closer to the target bean bag hole than their older siblings and us grandfolk.

Near the end of the competition someone had set up a challenge between my son, Scott, and me. His family had already competed.

Now every Mom probably has lost many games of “Go Fish” or “Crazy Eight” to their kids when they were little. So I don’t mind losing to him. But he’s grown up now and I’m going to make him work for it!

I had played a couple of games of tossing the bean bags earlier that day. I figured I had the “power swing” down.

So I didn’t expect to go scoreless!

We had a goal of 11 points. Soon Scott had nine and I had zero!

How could that be? I hadn’t even hit the board!

My last chance came up as Scott scored his winning points but I had my turn left.

The crowd yelled, “Get it in the hole!”

And although I hadn’t even gotten the bag onto the board up til now, I strutted up to the line and nodded to the crowd and tossed the bag... through the hole for three points!

Cheers and enthusiasm billowed up from the crowd.

I strutted around accepting their congratulations and they started calling and encouraging... “Do it again!”

Well, remember now that I hadn’t hit the board until that last throw! But I strutted right back up to the line and nodded to the crowd and tossed that bean bag and walla! I hit the hole again for another three points!

The crowd went berzerk cheering and yelling, “Do it again! Do it again!”

I performed a Jesse Ventura type of world wrestling championship stance as I held the bean bag above my head to show the crowd and went up to the line ... and tossed it in the hole for the third time!

I have no idea how I managed to toss those bags into the hole. It seemed like I was just watching along with everyone else!

No, I didn’t win the game. I had one more bag to toss and it missed the board totally.

But you know, with all my clowning around, and then making three fantastic tosses... no one probably even remembered who really won the game!

So, just do the best you can. Then everyone wins.

(I’ll try to remember this when watching pro football!)