A very dear friend of mine, in her budding days of recent retirement,
has taken up the challenge of learning how to juggle. Her weekly letters, detailing
both progress and pause, make me admire her tenacity, and her special idiosyncrasy
in selecting this peculiar activity.
I clearly remember the day I woke up from a very sound sleep
and knew without doubt, that I too, must learn to juggle. I have no idea what
my motivation was at the time, other than I just knew I had to learn how to do
it.
Being of sound body, but also of narrow focused viewpoint
and short attention span, I immediately drove down to the local sporting goods
store and bought three orange, lacrosse balls. Some cosmic other-worldly
knowledge told me that their heft and size would be perfect for my novice
efforts. And, in the short time it would probably take to get me to the
intermediate level, would also be suitable for more advanced tricks. These
projectiles, I pre-calculated, would also provide me with the appropriate bounce
and rebound energy I would require a few days later, once I had established
mastery over the art.
And so it was that I raced home, eager to begin my newly
imagined career as a street performer, circus clown, or wild animal trainer.
Whatever I had imagined at the time, all I could think of was that the solid rubber
trio now jockeying for their appropriate positions in my hands were the keys to
future fame and fortune.
One can therefore imagine my distain, shock, and heartfelt
disappointment when upon launch, the law of gravity did not redirect itself at
my will, and the first two of the orange spheres sheared off in opposite
directions after colliding mid-toss. Almost immediately, the rebounding
property of solidified rubber came into play and both balls ricocheted from
whatever surface to which they had connected. One of the orange bullets glanced
off my right shoulder, the resulting whack causing me to turn in that direction.
Thus distracted, the opposite side of my pumpkin-like head was now open to attack
from the other missile and was greeted with an unhealthy thud to the temple.
I may have been dazed but I was not discouraged.
Once the two balls had settled from their paths of
destruction, I retrieved them and gingerly repositioned them in my hands. This
was simply a matter of physics I kept telling myself as I once more hefted
their weight and gauged their potential trajectories; completely forgetting of
course that I had only passed that high school class with a questionable C+
grading.
A few more seconds of calculation and once more the balls
were airborne…
This time however, I needed to shield myself from all three,
as I quickly hunched over in reactive panic, my arms flailing madly in defense
of their Newtonian blows.
Regretfully, I’m not the swiftest runner in a shoestore full
of sneakers… so it took a couple of more body blows for me to figure out that
either I had to obtain softer items to juggle, or I had to prevent the lacrosse
balls from hitting the floor. Seeing as how I was too lazy to obtain alternate
implements of destruction, I chose instead to toss the balls while standing
alongside, and facing, my bed. This proved to be one of those moments of epiphany,
as not only were the spheres prevented from escape and further damage to the
house, I also didn’t need to constantly stoop down or bend over to pick them
up.
From this dramatic moment in my timeline, I also discovered
the peculiar human attribute of knowledge sharing; and the fact that others,
before me, had learned this amazing form of art and had documented their revelations
for anyone who might care to follow. From those experiences, and the books the
explorers wrote about them, I learned that you really begin to juggle with just
one ball, just as you begin any journey with a single footstep.
Now, where did I put those oranges?
Article Copyright J. Michael Lyffe - 2014
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