Great Scot!

          Have you ever attempted something for the very first time and surpassed all expectations?  St. Bob's dad bowled a perfect strike the first (and only) time he threw a bowling ball.  Bob, himself, can pick up a golf club or a tennis racket and beat people who play every weekend.

          I've never had this happen in my lifetime.  Our son, Richie, however, just discovered a hidden talent: Haggis Hurling.

          I shall explain. For 138 years, there’s been an annual Scottish Games and Festival in Woodland, a nearby city.  It’s the third oldest in the U.S. and it’s exactly as you picture it: Highland dancing, piping and drumming, celtic music, food vendors, fiddling and harps, clan information, bagpipes, long haired cattle, and of course-- men in kilts hurling heavy logs, hammers, and metal objects as high or as far as they can.

Well, Richie has a Scottish friend who convinced him to go.  Toward the end of the day, they stopped to watch various men throwing Haggis, a combination of sheep organs, onions, and seasonings, encased in a sheep’s stomach, but which was also wrapped in duct tape for purposes of this competition.

After several moments of Richie claiming he could throw it farther than those guys, and his friend expressing genuine doubt about this, Richie stepped up onto the half-barrel and gave it a try. He has never seen Haggis before, nor attempted this feat, but 15 years ago he was the goalie for his high school’s water polo team, and would routinely throw the ball from his net into the net of the opposing team.  So he tapped into that old memory, and voile!  Or, seol, which is the same expression in Gaelic-- He threw it nearly 100 feet and won 2nd place!

For his efforts he was awarded a handsome certificate and some chocolate, cleverly named Haggis Pie by its maker, Brown's English Toffee.  If you ask me, one bite of chocolate is worth a boatload of Haggis stomachs.

And I am, of course, claiming a moral victory here by passing along beginner’s luck, something I’m pretty sure skips a generation.

Have you watched my new music video, yet?  I wrote What Makes a Woman with Jerry Williams, as part of our musical, The Best Medicine.  And we turned that one song into an empowering anthem for women—take a look and share it with your friends!