Juggling

Henry has recently taken a liking to the computer, or concuter as he calls it. He likes to look at the Curious George website which has all kinds of fascinating games on it. The fruit juggling game is his favourite but the hardest for him to play because he hasn't quite yet learned how to count as well as George. He's hooked on the idea of juggling however and is always looking for things to juggle. He especially likes fruit but juggling real fruit is messy and expensive so this morning I gave him some onions. It was 5.30AM. I wasn't quite feeling alive yet but Henry wanted to juggle and no amount of explaining to him that my eyes were not yet fully open was going to deter him.

Trying to teach a kid to juggle is really hard. I can only juggle two objects with my hands at a time myself. Notice that I said objects and hands because I am quite capable of juggling three million things at once in my mind. But mind juggling doesn't count. My kid can't see what's going on in my head.

So at 5.45AM we were standing in the kitchen with three onions and a muesli bar attempting to juggle. I was unsuccessful and it was frustrating Henry because I couldn't keep them in the air like George does. I gave the onions to him and turned my attention to the kettle. As I did so I was hit in the head with a flying onion. I turned around to find Henry about ready to hike another heavenwards, in the direction of the lightbulb. "Stop" I yelled. You're going to break something. For some reason this caused Henry to double over laughing and ....well suggestion is a powerful thing. The remaining onions were all hurled at lightning speed towards the lightbulb. Fortunately they all missed and crashed to the floor with a terrible thud.

I thought it was about time I paid some attention and tried to explain to Henry, who is only three, how juggling works. I didn't know how to do it. The only words coming from my mouth were - "you have to thing the thing in the air and then the thing passes to the other hand while you thing the other thing..."

Not very succinct. I didn't go anywhere near trying to explain how juggling works. I thought about googling it to see if I could find out if someone else in the world had committed words to screen on the art of juggling. I didn't. Henry became more frustrated by the minute and walked away to watch Curious George doing it for real.

I sat on the floor and cradled my cup of tea and thought about how frustrating raising a child is. Why do they want to know how juggling works at 5.30AM? More importantly why couldn't I come up with a reasonable explanation. I told myself it was because it was only 5.30AM and no sane person would even care about juggling at that hour let alone be trying to explain how it works to a three year old. But...all day I've thought about ways in which I could explain how juggling works to Henry. It won't leave me alone. I'm obsessed, not with juggling but with explaining stuff to my kid and doing it in a way that makes me sound like I almost know what I'm talking about.