A Juggler's Life for Me?!

I just spent a few days with my son in New York City.  I wanted to get a taste of his life as a professional juggler.  As it turned out, he had a gig one of the nights I was there, and I decided it would be fun to accompany him.  He had been hired to juggle at an Orthodox Jewish wedding in suburban New Jersey.  That seemed to me to be a bit out of the ordinary, but who am I to say what’s ordinary in the life of a juggler?  It took us several hours to get to the wedding venue, first by subway and then by bus.  We walked the last 2 ½ miles from the bus station to the hall where the wedding was held.  The walk was excruciating to me, but not because of its length.  Tons of pollen were in the air and it kept getting under my contact lenses.  My eyes were in pain and watering so badly I could barely see as we hiked through suburban housing developments and observed the green dusting of pollen on cars and sidewalks. 

Our plan had been to arrive early and to grab some supper at a fast food place.  The early part worked out OK.  We arrived a little after 7:00pm for an 8:30 gig.  The supper part?  Not so well.  There wasn’t a restaurant, grocery store or any type of place to buy food anywhere in the vicinity of the wedding hall.  Maybe, I thought, they would offer us a few appetizers or even send us a plate of food from the kitchen.  No such luck.  Fortunately, we had a couple of apples and two snack-sized bags of chocolate chip cookies in our backpacks.  As the smell of food wafted past our noses, we noshed on our apples and cookies and hoped there would be a McDonald’s nearby when we got back to the bus station. 

They say the devil is in the details and the guy who had hired my son to juggle for this wedding provided very few of them.  We had no idea when he was supposed to juggle, how he was supposed to juggle or where he was supposed to juggle.  We didn’t know whether the hall had a sound system he could use, whether he could use the band’s sound system or whether he was supposed to use his own.  (He had brought a portable sound system just in case.)  It turned out that it was the groom who hired him, and the groom clearly had other things on his mind.  The only thing we knew for sure is that my son needed to perform while wearing a yarmulke, which was graciously supplied by the groom.  So we cooled our heels in a hallway, feeling horribly out of place and trying to make sure we weren’t doing anything that might offend the Orthodox Jewish wedding guests.

Suddenly, a bearded guy in a dark suit (looking a lot like a hundred other male guests at the wedding) appeared to tell my son the time had come for him to juggle.  Fortunately, a fellow that worked at the hall invited me to accompany him through the kitchen and into the hall so I could see my son’s performance.  It looked like the band was going to take a break, and it still hadn’t been made clear what sound system was going to be used for my son’s juggling music.  However, the band decided to play on.  They lit into a series of fast and furious Klezmer-style songs, and my son juggled to match the tunes.  Rings were flying, clubs were sailing, balls were cascading and then rings were in the air again.  Then, what’s that?  A muppet made an appearance, and suddenly he was flying high into the air.  I almost expected to see a kitchen sink being juggled as my son pulled out all stops in this Jugglemania of a show.  The Jewish men formed a circle around him as he juggled, and the Jewish women peered around the edge of the partition that separated the men from the women to get a better look. 

Then, in the middle of my son’s performance, I saw flaming torches being tossed into the air.  A Jewish teen had run into the middle of the circle juggling fire.  Not to be outdone, my son pulled out knives and started to juggle them.  Then the Jewish juggler lit his hat on fire as he ran around juggling the lit torches!  At this point I was glad my son didn’t decide to continue this game of one-upmanship by slicing and dicing his yarmulke with the knives.  A short time later, the band finished playing and the guy with the flaming hat beat it against a table cloth to put out the flames.  That seemed to indicate that the show was over. 

The bearded guy in the dark suit and hat appeared again and told my son to come back and do some more juggling once everyone had settled down to dinner.  I didn’t get to see that part, but it was shortened when the groom stood up to give a speech.  That was the end of the gig. 

We called a cab and got back to the bus station around 11:00pm.  Of course, there was no McDonald’s or anything else within walking distance of the station.  We finally grabbed a slice of pizza when we got back to the city around 1:30am – a real bargain at $1/slice.  We hopped a subway and arrived at his apartment around 2:30.  Thank God there was a cold beer in the fridge!  We talked for a bit to decompress from our adventure and went to bed around 3:00am.

A juggler’s life is certainly different from the work I knew as a corporate lawyer for over 30 years.  For my son, there is no such thing as a typical day at the office.  Every gig is a new adventure.  I am glad that I was able to accompany him on this one. 

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