(from the Michigan Pond Hockey tournament, around the block)

Hi, this is Emily. I am blogging about my experiences learning to juggle. This may not sound interesting, but I am (and many can vouch) an exceptionally clumsy and uncoordinated person. People like me should probably not be allowed to try to juggle. But I did. I am by NO MEANS an expert juggler. I am a beginner. But I wanted to share my juggling journey – for no particular reason…maybe I am just excited about potentially being a sweet juggler. Maybe I just want to encourage other clumsy people to take up juggling. Maybe I just like talking about juggling because it is really fun. I don’t really know. But here goes.

To me, juggling has always been very impressive. My dad was the first person I’ve seen do it, and when I did, I thought he was the only person who could do it. “There is no WAY other people have this ability!” Of course, I was a stupid baby at the time and inevitably I realized it is a relatively common skill. I never thought I would be able to do it since I am clinically uncoordinated, so I really never tried. Until recently.
About three weeks ago, I went to see Penn & Teller with Matt and some friends. It was an absolutely amazing show, and after it was done I could not stop thinking about it. Not only was I mesmerized by the illusions, but also I loved seeing Penn juggle. Granted, he was juggling knives, so obviously it was impressive. But it reminded me how intriguing juggling is. A few days after the show I watched a few tutorials on YouTube about how to juggle. I did not have any proper balls, so I found a few spherical cat toys of similar size and weight and went to practicing.
I started practicing with one ball. I would throw it in arch about eye/forehead level back and forth and back and forth over and over and over. You get the point. It seems simple, but getting this part down is crucial.
The next step is to add a second ball. Start with one ball in each hand. You throw one ball to the other hand and right before you catch it throw the other ball to the other hand. This took longer to nail. It was not pretty at first, but one fateful night, I spent about 3 hours doing this pretty much non-stop during a Netflix stand up comedy binge. After that I had it down. Now, juggling tutorials will tell you “Once you can juggle two balls, you’ll be able to juggle three in NO TIME AT ALL!!!!” This is a giant load of falseness…. at least for me it was. I tried that third ball. I tried it with those encouraging words from the YouTube tutorials in my head. “No sweat” I thought “You can juggle two balls like a pro, just add one more. Heck, add two more. Whatever, who cares, I am awesome at this.” Well my overconfident self was in for a world of disappointment when I added that third ball. I soon realized that I am not the juggling prodigy I thought I would be. I was horrible for a few days. Like, it was sad. But I kept on because I really wanted to be able to do it. I finally was able to throw and catch the third ball. But this brought me to the next big juggling hurdle…

HOW DO I DO THE FORTH THROW??? My world was turned upside down. My hands had no idea how to handle this concept. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands at the point of catching the third ball. Of course the answer is – Throw the ball in the hand you’re catching the third ball with. But my brain and my motor skills just could not grasp this simple concept of movement. It took a juggling lesson with my dad to finally conquer this beast. It was like magic. I got the feel for what I had to do to make that forth throw. Followed shortly by the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth throw. I had gotten in the juggling grove and that is where I stand now. I know what movements need to be made, but I am in NO WAY done learning. However, I did buy get some real juggling balls! On some tries, I will have a good run of solid throws and catches, but other times I will just drop everything like a weirdo. I still need a lot of practice to be as good as I want to be. And I am fine with the process taking longer for me since my hand – eye coordination seems to be a tad underdeveloped. I am making progress everyday. And I plan to continue until I can juggle those knives like Penn.