J is for Juggle

Once summer when we were too young to have jobs outside the home, and our only ongoing source of income was the penny per Japanese Beetle that our mother paid us to rid her garden and our trees of that scourge, my brothers and I learned to juggle. It took the better part of a week, as I recall. Although we practiced and gained proficiency with tennis balls out in the back yard, it wasn’t long before Robert began juggling fruit in the kitchen to get a rise out of Mom.

A decade or more later, I found myself teaching my boss at the graphic design firm in Toronto, still a friend, how to juggle. We were spending the afternoon on Toronto Island, as I recall, and I must have found three tennis balls outside the public tennis courts somewhere along the way. To this day, whenever I see three tennis balls lying around, I am compelled to pick them up and start juggling. This amazed George, and he wanted to learn how to juggle right then and there. So I started teaching him, and within a week or so he had it down.

Just the other day, out of nowhere, my daughter sent me a video of her younger brother juggling! We didn’t even know he’d been learning how, but he picked it up from a character in one of his favorite Madagascar movies. Just like that, or so it seemed. No sooner had he performed for his sister than he demanded we both delete the video. But unbeknownst to him, she put it on Facebook before she deleted it on her phone, and I managed to send it to Grandma K and and couple of friends first. He does not like celebrity, though he was obviously pleased with his accomplishment and how impressed we both were.

Life Lesson: You are never too old (or too young) to learn new tricks!