howard said i'll teach you to juggle while you're here
"oh no i couldn't" i said "way too uncoordinated. really a klutz." and my childhood flashed before me. i could see myself playing catch and duck-for-your-life aerobie with mom, (who berated me for throwing like a girl) or beating my head in with my own quarterstaff for a few years as a kid. "it's not about coordination" howard continued. i didn't care. it was about doing something new and physical and undoubtedly ridiculous that would involve time and breaking other people's china just to find something i'd never be able to do well. he made some more noises but they weren't even being processed by that point. i was making similar noises to put him off. from the back of my parliamentary mind a little voice spoke out of my cacophony of physical memory-fears.
"quinn" it said,
"quinn... one of the flying karamazov brothers just offered to teach you how to juggle. shut the fuck up and just say 'sure' and 'thanks'."
it got real quiet in my head. i looked at howard and managed; "sure. thanks." i think i even threw in an "i'd like that" for good measure. howard told me that no one was perfect from the start, except movie stars. danny devito and james brooks he said. they could juggle just from the moment they touched the balls. it was their business, to be able to do anything. they could do anything, he guessed, because they thought they could do anything.
i, on the other hand can barely do anything. or, at least that's what i think. a few days later in the family room howard was working with me, and telling me that i was doing really well. watching him was neat. he didn't seem to notice he was juggling. he didn't really move his hands much. he breathed, and that seemed to be all there was to it, on a couple of occasions he even suggested i might want to breath as well. i told him that i was scared, that i was really bad at being bad at things. but i kept going... this is so often my secret. "how do you do what you do?" i get asked "with no confidence at all?" and i think, oh, another one's noticed. i just keep putting one foot in front of another. i don't make a conscious decision to pick the balls back up or whatever is the latest impossibility, i just keep bumbling through all the while knowing it can only end badly. i don't have much of a philosophy. i seem to have unhooked reason from my instinct to keep moving.
which is all nice and well, but shortly thereafter mom showed up. she didn't mean badly, but she laughed at my fuck ups.. and the cacophony started again. and the parliament woke up and reminded me how bad i was at anything physical. and i put the balls back down. i worked on the network, since it was the one thing i knew better than anyone in the house, it was my unassailable ivory tower for the day. when no one was looking i went down to the basement and mostly managed to pitch tennis balls off in all directions.
howard was really sweet. he assured me that of thousands of people he's taught i was 70th or 80th percentile, i was doing very well, i just needed to practice. i was alternatingly not believing him and being mad at myself for not being danny devito or james brooks, for not being immediately perfect in my own right. i could hear heather in my mind telling shannon and i that all three of us had to learn one of these days that 99th percentile didn't mean 'average'. to howard i said, thanks, and i'll keep practicing. i've learned not to casually expose people to meandering debates in my head, which actually took me a while, but counts as at least 50% of my social skills.
i'm practicing. i've been trying to juggle for nearly a week, and i can't do it yet, and i'm not a movie star yet. i can't do anything yet. i don't know if i ever will. in the mean time, i keep moving. for no other reason than it's what i do, not what i expect. undoubtedly i shall try to learn programming again soon as well, which may not seem related but nevertheless it's a land where i freeze up viciously. i can't do it, that's for sure. douglas adams was onto something... for me learning to fly is so much about throwing myself at the ground and missing.