Off Course On Purpose
Chapter 1: I’ll Have a Coke
“Oh, he’s so scared he’s shaking,” said the surgical nurse.
I look down at my hand and see that she’s right; it is indeed shaking, but it’s not fear, it’s anticipation.
I’ve had this heart condition since I was eighteen months old, and I’d long accepted that being a sick kid would be my normal for as long as I lived. But a few months ago, during a routine visit with my cardiologist, he suggested I see a specialist.
The specialist thumbed through a stack of manila file folders four inches thick, all stuffed with my old medical records, and after examining the case, recommended a procedure called an ablation. The idea, he explained, was to make an incision in both of the veins by my hips, plus another one in my neck. Then he’d slide long electrodes and a camera through my circulatory system until they reached my heart. Once there, the electrodes would burn away the excess nerve tissue that was causing my irregularities. If everything went well, my heart rate would stabilize. The doctor cautioned, though, that the procedure was no guarantee; it doesn’t always work.
I looked at my mother, who’d been with me through every moment of my years of heart-related torment, and said, “I want it.”
After that, the pieces moved into place quickly. And today, only weeks before my eighteenth birthday, we’d woken early to drive to the surgical center.
The nurses and doctors bustled about the operating room, making their preparations. A man in green scrubs, a mask, and black-rimmed glasses sat down and introduced himself. “Mr. Berry, my name is Dr. Smith, and I’m your anesthesiologist. I’ll be right here monitoring everything the whole time.”
I smiled at him and said, “I’m not gonna fall for that whole count backwards from ten thing, no one ever gets there.”
He chuckled and said, “Ah, so you’re a frequent flyer, already know all my tricks.”
“I’m sure you’ve still got a few up your sleeve,” I said.
He laughed again, then turned his attention to the various syringes laid out on his table.
I feel a cold, wet, trickling sensation down my left arm.
“Oops, my IV is leaking,” I announced.
The nurse lifted the warmed white cotton blankets I was buried in to look, “Oh yeah, we got a geyser.”
This sparked a brief discussion among the assembly, leading to a decision to have a nurse reset my IV.
Interjecting, I asked, “Is it still working, or is it toast?”
Glancing down at it again, the nurse said, “Uhh, it’s still working.”
Looking at her, I said, “I’ve been stuck thousands upon thousands of times, and I was sorta hoping this would be the last one for a while. Any chance you can knock me out and then reset it?”
The nurse pursed her lips, then looked at the anesthesiologist.
He shrugged and looked at the surgeon as if to ask, Is that cool with you?
The surgeon considered this for a moment, then nodded in acquiescence.
The anesthesiologist picked up a syringe full of milky white fluid, inserted it into my IV, and said, “I guess you were right about that count-backward-from-ten thin…”
The world shifted, and I melted into the bottomless nothing of an anesthetic sleep.
* * *
The next thing I remember is a recovery nurse rolling me into a room and telling my mom what a pleasant patient I’d been. Then the surgeon came in to talk to us.
To my mom, he said, “You’ll be pleased to know the surgery was a success.”
Her arms shot up with clenched fists pumping in triumph, and she exclaimed, “Oh my god, this is a dream, thank you, doctor.” Then she looked at me and said, “We’ve been through so much; this is the miracle we’ve prayed for.”
Then, he turned to me and said, “You’re now a normal seventeen-year-old, same as any other.”
Without thinking, I asked, “Does this mean I can even ride roller coasters, or bungee jump, or skydive, and everything else if I want to?”
My mom sighed disapprovingly at this, “Ughhh.”
He laughed and said, “Well, you should wait a little while for everything to heal, but yes, you can do all those things if you really want to, as long as it’s ok with your mom.”
We all laughed at this, and then my mom asked if it was ok to bring me something to eat.
He looked at me and asked, “How do you feel? Do you have any nausea? Would you like to eat something?”
Because of the surgery, I hadn’t eaten anything since the day before, so I immediately rattled off an order: “Colossus Burger from Jack In The Box!”
The doctor’s eyes widened. “I was thinking something more along the lines of Jell-O.”
Disappointment washed across my face, so he continued, “But I suppose it’s ok, as long as you go slowly and make sure your stomach can handle it. I don’t want you to vomit and upset the sutures.”
I felt fine, but I promised to go slowly. Then he left to attend to other patients.
“Okay, so one Colossus Burger,” my mom repeated with a big smile, “Anything else?”
“Yes, please, fries, and a large root beer. NO WAIT! I want a COKE! MOM! I can have a COKE!!”
“That’s right, you can have caffeine now. Alright, and a large Coke.”
I’d only gotten to taste Coca-Cola a couple of times before, and each time, I’d loved it. But because of the caffeine, I’d never been allowed to have it. Wow, I thought, I get to have my first real Coke.
She left to get the food, and I was left alone.
I looked around the room and took in its familiar elements. Next to me was the rolling IV stand with fluids drip drip dripping. Each droplet slowly made its way through the tubes until it flowed into my arm through the IV. Beside me was the beige hospital remote with its array of buttons. I didn’t have to examine it to know that four of them would adjust the bed’s angles and elevations. Next to those buttons would be a nurse call button and a big red emergency call button I could hit if my heart ever stopped. Then there were the ubiquitous sticky tabs, distributed across my chest, each attached by a different-colored wire, all of which led back to the heart monitor. I looked up at the monitor’s small screen and the green line that jumped in response to each of my heartbeats. Next to that was a little number that, at a glance, told anyone my heart rate was chilling at sixty-three beats per minute. Due to the frequency of my visits, I’d watched these heart-monitoring devices evolve over the years, gradually becoming smaller and lighter as technology advanced. I relaxed back and interlaced my fingers over my chest. As I did, a stabbing pain shot through my arm from the IV. The pain triggered a memory from way back in second grade, and like a movie, I watched it in my mind.
* * *
I was seven years old, the year was 1984, and I’d spent more days than I could count in the hospital under observation. So much so, I’d made friends with other kids. One of whom was a little girl who had cancer. And like me, she was always around. One day, as we played, I noticed blood had backed up in the tubing of her IV.
“Yeah,” she said when I pointed it out, “they’ll probably have to give me a new one.”
I felt awful for her. I hated needles; they always hurt so much.
She went to get it fixed, and I headed back to my room.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be the last time I’d ever see her.
A few days later, I asked one of the nurses about my friend. The nurse’s face got tight, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. Then she said, “I’m not allowed to give out any information about patients.”
I didn’t understand. They’d always talked to me about her before when I asked, but now she refused.
As I lay in my hospital bed later that night, I realized she’d probably died from the cancer.
She’d been so quick to smile and so positive. But now she was gone. It didn’t feel fair. It WASN’T fair. But we were sick kids, and maybe that’s just what happens to sick kids. Sick kids like her, and sick kids like me.
In a sort of detached way, I wondered how long it would be before my heart condition did the same and took me. So I set a goal for myself. I would try to live to be twenty-one. That seemed like a good age to live to, and I figured I could live a good life if I made it to twenty-one.
* * *
The movie in my mind fizzled out, and I returned to the present moment.
The weight of the countless hours and days I’d spent in hospitals crashed in on me. I’d long accepted the possibility of dying young, but now, I was cured…
I began to imagine all the things that would be different now.
No more emergency room visits.
No more blood tests.
No more daily medications.
Absentmindedly, I touched my neck with two fingers to feel my pulse, a habit I performed many times each day.
::thump bump:: ::thump bump:: came the familiar beats.
Ah, I thought, and I don’t have to check my pulse all the time; I can just live my life.
Just live my life… What a thought.
And I wondered for the first time, What is a person supposed to do with a whole life?
Chapter 2: You’re an Adult Now
The next few weeks flew by; I had my eighteenth birthday and got through the Christmas holiday, all without any notable heart issues. It would occasionally beat weirdly, as if it was trying to snap into an episode, but the nerve path it needed to do so had been burned away in surgery, so it couldn’t anymore. In these moments, I’d feel a weird pressure in my chest, and my heart would freeze — an eerie feeling because I’d sit expectantly waiting and wondering if it was going to start again. Then, a few moments would pass, and it’d kick on again.
At first, this was nerve-wracking, but once I began to trust that it would start beating again, it became normal. And this new normal was so much better than the old one had been.
So that was good.
What wasn’t good was the fact that I’d never thought very seriously about preparing for adulthood.
Most particularly in school. I’d always figured, “If I’m not going to grow up, then I’ll never go to college or have to worry about getting a job. So why waste the precious time I have doing schoolwork?”
But now I had a future to worry about, and if I was going to turn things around and try to go to college, I only had the second half of my senior year left to do it. I’d never found school difficult; if anything, it was too easy. My real challenge was staying engaged and not letting myself daydream when the lessons dragged on and on.
* * *
The drive to school was long enough for my mind to wander. And I was lost in a daydream when my mom’s voice interrupted my reverie.
“You’re going to be late.”
Looking at the clock on the dashboard of our old Toyota Corolla Stationwagon, I saw that she was right.
“Can you write me a note to excuse me?” I asked.
My mom considered the request. Then she said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Now that you’re eighteen, I’m gonna let you handle those kinds of things for yourself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, if you don't write me a note, I’ll get detention!”
“You’re an adult now, that’s between you and the school.”
“Yes, technically, I'm eighteen, but they won’t recognize that!”
“It’s between YOU and the school.” She reiterated adamantly.
We pulled up to the curb where parents dropped off their kids, and she stopped the car.
I wanted to argue and tell her she was being ridiculous, but I could tell she wasn’t going to change her mind, so I just got out of the car.
She means well, but the “autonomy” she’d just granted me wouldn’t carry any weight with the school.
I walked to the admin building and stood in line behind five other students who were also late.
Flipping open my notebook, I start to write a note to excuse myself.
“Please excuse…” but then I stop because the next word decides everything.
If I write, “Please excuse me,” they’ll know I wrote it myself, give me a detention anyway, and maybe even escalate things because I’d tried to write my own note. But if I write, “Please excuse my son,” I’d be lying, committing forgery, and working the system instead of exercising my legal adult autonomy. I stand frozen, torn, unable to decide the best course of action. I don’t have long to decide, because the line of students ahead of me is shrinking. I weigh every possible option until there’s only one person left ahead of me.
Knowing it’s now or never, I write, “Please excuse my son for being late. Thanks, Sue Berry.” Then I tear it out of the notebook, fold it a few times, and put it in my pocket.
The kid ahead of me collects their detention slip and leaves; now it’s my turn at the window.
The student aide behind the glass doesn’t even look at me as she says, “School ID and note from your parent?”
I hesitate for a moment, then slide my ID through the slot at the bottom of the glass.
“No note?” She asks.
“No note,” I respond.
Without a word, she writes up a detention slip, tears off the pink carbon copy, and hands it to me. I thank her and start the walk to class.
One little lie could have gotten me out of the whole situation, but that’s not who I am. But then again, going to detention to be punished for something I’m no longer required to subject myself to doesn’t sound like me either. I thought about it for the rest of the day, still unsure what to do. And when the final bell of the day rang, I walked towards the designated detention room.
Reaching the fork in the sidewalk, I stop and look to the left. Down that walkway, I see a teacher standing outside his classroom, clipboard in hand. Two students stand before him, patiently waiting as he logs in their student ID numbers. He hands back their IDs, and they go inside. He looks the part of a high school teacher in his beige khakis and long-sleeved button-down shirt. Seeing him standing there, I’m struck by the fact that he, too, is in detention. Was he late to work this week? Is that how they decide which teachers end up with detention duty? Or is this just part of his job? What if he jumped through every scholastic hoop he’d ever been told to jump through, was never late to school, never missed a day of school, and was a model student in every way? Yet, here he is, “pulling detention.” As I consider this, he checks his watch, then, scanning the horizon for any stragglers, he spies me. Motioning towards the door, he mimes the question, “You coming?”
I smile, but shake my head. No, that’s not where I’m supposed to be, is my silent response.
He nods and steps into the classroom, pulling the door shut behind him. I know he’s also locking it to ensure anyone arriving late is denied entry, forcing them into an additional detention as punishment for missing this one. It’s a fancy game, and I’d always played along in the past. But, if I’m truly the autonomous adult my mom has declared me to be, then I don’t have to play anymore.
Taking the right fork, I walk down the sidewalk that leads off campus and head for home.
* * *
The next morning, in my first-period class, the teacher went from desk to desk passing out various papers. When she got to me, she dropped two pink notices in front of me.
“Two detentions,” she said with a tsk-tsk tone of voice.
The defenders of the system, it appears, don’t just let you stop playing the game. And I know I'm supposed to feel chastised, like I’m some sort of troublemaker needing to repent of sin, but I don’t feel bad at all. Their spell has been broken. I’m legally an adult now, and that means I’m free, even if they don’t want to acknowledge it.
At the end of the day, I did what I’d done the day before: I walked straight past detention and went home.
* * *
On the third day, I arrived at class and saw that I’d accrued a third detention.
Predictably, I skipped this one, too.
At this point, I knew they’d never have a genuine conversation with me about it. It’s not like my first-period teacher ever asked why this was happening; she just kept to the playbook.
I’d never heard of anyone refusing to do their detentions before, so I had no idea where this road would lead. Maybe I’ll just keep accruing detentions forever?
Or, maybe not, because once I’d skipped that third detention, no more detentions landed on my desk.
A whole week passed without another word, and I wondered if maybe they’d forgotten the whole thing.
Ha! Not a chance.
The following Monday, my first-period teacher dropped a yellow piece of paper on my desk. “Saturday School,” it read in bold letters across the top. Since I had denied them their three hours of detention, they now wanted my entire Saturday.
The slip was dated for the upcoming Saturday, a day I was already scheduled to work at Little Caesars Pizza.
At the start of my senior year, I’d already been trying for months to find a job. But application after application went nowhere, and it felt like no one would ever give me a shot. But then a friend put in a good word with the manager at Little Caesars, and they took a chance on me. Sure, it might only be a pizza job, but I’d worked really hard to get it, so I wasn’t about to call out to go to Saturday School.
So, I didn’t go to Saturday School.
On Monday, my first-period teacher dropped another yellow Saturday school slip on my desk, but now it had two Saturdays in a row marked on it, the additional one being punishment for missing the first.
I didn’t attend either of those, so I got a third Saturday school, which, big surprise, I skipped. After that, things got quiet again for several weeks.
Then, a lady showed up at my first-period class and told me to pack my things. I followed her to the principal’s building and was told to sit in a small room with about ten other kids.
She then announced in a you all know the drill tone that made it clear she thought we’d all been here before, “Welcome to In-School Suspension (ISS). You are allowed to work on classwork, or you can sit quietly and do nothing; that’s it. No talking, no pleasure reading, no snacking, nothing else, period. If you have a question, raise your hand, and I’ll come over to you. Other than that, you’re mine for the day.” Then she sat at her desk with a demeanor that indicated she’d be right there watching us all day.
I’d already done my Civics and English homework, and my other four classes were all electives, mostly theater or stagecraft, so I didn’t have anything immediately pressing to work on. I opted to sit quietly and stare at the wall. However, about fifteen minutes later, a teacher’s aide walked into the room and spoke with our overseer. It must have been something she needed to address, because she got up and left the room. In that brief moment, I calmly gathered my belongings, walked out, and returned to my regular class. The rest of that day was business as usual, but the next morning, the same ISS teacher showed up to my first-period class again and pulled me out a second time. She even threw me a bone, saying, “I know you and I made a deal about yesterday, but now you’ll have to do ISS for two days instead of one.” I nodded my head in acknowledgment. I wasn’t upset with her; she’s just doing her job. Arriving back at the same small classroom, I sat at the same desk I’d had the day before. And, just as the day before, the teacher eventually had to step out of the class. So I excused myself again to return to my normal classes.
Having learned the ISS routine, I knew they’d grab me out of my first-period class, so I started arriving late to school, waiting until after my first class ended, and then showed up to my second class of the day as if it were my normal schedule. This bought me a few more weeks before the administration caught on to what was happening. And that’s when a new lady showed up, this time to my fourth-period class. I assumed I was going back to ISS, but this time, I was taken into the main admin building and told to wait. After twenty minutes, one of the secretaries took me in to see the principal. He was well-liked on campus, always wore a suit, and seemed a reasonable fellow, though I’d never actually spoken to him. His demeanor was neither angry nor disappointed; if anything, he seemed perplexed as he thumbed through my file and the accompanying stack of unattended disciplinary measures.
He spoke first, “I’m not quite sure what to do with you. Other than this,” he motioned to the pile of colorful papers, “your record is unblemished.” He halted to see if I’d defend myself, but I said nothing, so he continued. “I’ve reviewed your case, and though I don't like it, I have no choice but to suspend you for three days." Again, he waited for a response, but all I did was nod my head in understanding, so he continued. “However, if you go home early today, I’m willing to count this as one of the three days, even though the day is half over; that way, you’ll only have to miss two actual days. How does that sound?”
At this, I spoke, “Thank you, sir. I very much appreciate the offer, but with your permission, I would like to start the three days of suspension tomorrow.”
Looking confused, he asked, “Why do you want to start it tomorrow instead of today?”
“My sixth-period class today is drama, and since I’m a senior, I’ve been directing a group of freshmen actors for the past few weeks. My students are scheduled to perform today, and I promised them I’d be there.”
“So you want to be there for them?”
“Yes, sir.”
Leaning back in his chair, he considered my request. Then, shaking his head, he relented, “OK, you can start the suspension tomorrow.”
“Thank you, sir. Today is Tuesday, so I will see you all back here on Monday.”
He looked at me for a moment, and his brow furrowed. He must have wondered how a young man who called him sir had gotten into all this trouble to begin with. But he didn’t ask, and I didn’t explain, so he said, “I hope your students do well in their presentation.”
“I’m sure they will,” I said.
With that, we stood up, and he gestured towards the door. I made my way out of his office and back to class, happy to have had the chance to advocate for my students.
Later that day, I watched them perform, and it was wonderful. I was very proud of the work they did. Then I went home, spent my three days off playing hacky sack by the pool in our apartment complex, and come Monday, I was ready to get back to school. It felt good knowing my slate was clean and that I’d be able to go to my first-period class again.
But I ended up running late that day.
Once again, I walked up to the window; once again, I refused to forge a note; and once again, the aide gave me a detention I had no intention of going to. So, the agonizing process started all over again. I racked up the usual three detentions by the end of the week, followed by the three Saturday school notices. But as it neared the in-school suspension phase, they threw a curve. In the middle of lunch break, one of the yard ladies started talking to me. When the bell rang for class, she didn’t dismiss me; she just kept talking. Eventually, all the other kids had gone to their classes, and we were alone on the quad. Then she pointed to my backpack and asked, “Are these all your things? Do you have anything in your locker?”
Thinking for a moment, I said, “Nope, it’s all here.”
“Ok, good,” she said, “Let’s walk.”
So we walked, and as we did, we talked about general life things, how long she’d been with the school, etc., and it was all pleasant enough, but I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t taking me towards the admin buildings as I’d expected; instead, we were headed out towards the football fields at the edge of campus.
Eventually, we arrived at the last big chain-link gate separating the campus from the real world beyond the fence. That’s where we stopped and stood, just talking. We must have stood there for fifteen or twenty more minutes before it dawned on me what was happening.
Without any preamble, I said, “This is my last day here, isn’t it?” But it wasn’t a question.
She looked at me and said, “You're gonna be ok.”
I looked back at her and said, “Yeah, I never really fit in here. I’m ready to be out there.”
She nodded but didn't say anything.
“So, this is it.”
Again, she nodded but said nothing.
I looked at her again and said, “Just to be crystal clear, I don’t have to come back tomorrow?”
With a little smile, she said, “Like I said, you’re gonna be ok.”
Her answer spoke volumes, and I understood. They couldn’t tame me, but I wasn’t problematic, so they had no grounds to expel me either. And I was never going to fit into the program the way they needed me to.
So they got together and quietly created a plan that would work for me.
A plan that set me free.
Smiling at her, I said, “Thank you, Sue, for everything. You take care of yourself.”
Her eyebrows raised, surprised that I’d called her by name, something none of the students ever did, but then she smiled and nodded.
I turned and walked down the asphalt drive that led to the street, made the turn towards home, and left high school behind forever.
Chapter 3: The First Morning
The next morning, instead of waking to the blaring of an alarm clock and scrambling to get to school, I woke naturally to the sound of birds chirping outside. It was the first time I’d ever woken up on a school day without the oppressive feeling that I had to go somewhere and do something I didn’t want to do. I lay a little longer, enjoying the feeling of just being. Looking across the room, I saw a ray of morning sunlight peeking through a crack in the blinds. The ethereal beam of energy animated tiny particles of dust as they floated in the air. These particles would race in and out of the beam’s trajectory, becoming visible for brief moments before exiting back into the shadows. I thought how similar that is to life, how we flutter about in the light for the briefest of moments before passing back into the darkness.
Reaching into the mini fridge beside my bed that doubled as a nightstand, I opened the door and took out a cold jug of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. Popping the cap, I took three big swallows, then returned it to the fridge. There’s something about cranberry juice; it goes straight to the brain and dissolves the fog of slumber. Standing, I walked to my bedroom window, pulled up the blinds, slid open the east-facing window, and leaned out its screenless frame. The warm morning sun shone on my face, and a cool breeze tossed my hair. I closed my eyes to soak it all in.
Suddenly, I felt something unfamiliar. Something warm, fresh, and expectant, something so like happiness, I had to believe it was happiness. I searched my memories, wondering if I’d ever felt anything like this before, but couldn’t think of a time. Opening my eyes again, I saw two sparrows fly across my neighbor’s backyard. They were so light, so free, with no one telling them what to do.
I wanted to be like that, but how?
I watched them from my second-story vantage, unhurried, enjoying their aeronautical dance. Then a thought came to me: From this day forward, I can do anything I want, be anything I want, go anywhere I want, I am free!
And then I knew it for sure; this was happiness.
Leaning back in, I closed the window.
Looking around my bedroom, I saw something I’d never noticed before. It was a disorganized mess, a child’s room, but today I am no longer a child, so I’m not going to live like one. I immediately set to cleaning. I washed my dirty clothes and bedding, threw away everything I didn’t need, and after pilfering some hangers from my mom’s room, hung all my clothes in the closet, something I’d never done before. Literally every item I owned passed under my now scrutinous eye. By noon, I’d evaluated and sorted every item I owned right down to the last paper clip. Then I pulled all the furniture away from the wall and used the crevice tool on the vacuum, another thing I’d never done before, to deep clean every inch of my space. And for once, it wasn’t because anyone told me to do it. I was accountable to myself now, and there would be no shortcuts from this day forward.
It was a small step towards taking control of my life, this conquering of the bedroom. But intuitively, I knew that to become lord over one’s domain, you must begin somewhere.
Now, what’s next?
Oh yes—decisions.
Should I graduate from high school? Go to college? Or skip college altogether?
Back when I started eleventh grade, I was offered the opportunity to join a program for students behind on credits. The idea was that we’d take college-level courses at the community college to catch up. These courses were free; all you had to do was buy your books. And because the college credits were of higher value than regular high school credits, you could knock out two of the required high school credits by earning just one college credit.
It was meant to catch me up, but I’d seen it as a way to accelerate my escape from school and graduate early, so I applied and was accepted. Before my senior year had even started, I’d already taken and passed a number of these college courses.
So even though I’d been escorted off campus and wouldn’t be able to finish the twelfth grade, I already had enough credits to graduate from high school. All I had to do was pick up the phone, call the college, transfer the credits, and graduate. Not on time, but ahead of time — and with credits to spare.
I grabbed my corded phone, opened my little black address book, and found the number. I started to dial, but then I stopped myself.
Do I really want to go to college?
One of the reasons I’d felt so ebullient this morning was because I was done with school, done with meaningless lists of tasks that were supposed to prepare us for life but never seemed to.
Plus, if I go, I’ll need to come up with a bunch of money for tuition, just to trudge through more classes.
Say I get through that and end up with a bachelor’s or even a master’s degree, what then? I want to start my own business. I’ve wanted that since I was a kid watching my dad run his own business out of our garage. How will taking on college debt help me do that?
I closed the address book and sat for a moment to organize my thoughts. I knew this was a crossroads, and that the decision I make today will impact me for the rest of my life.
I can’t get this wrong, I thought.
Having long been an avid reader, a book I’d read recently came to mind. It was about the tech giants and entrepreneurs of the day: people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who had both dropped out of college in order to chase their dreams and do things differently.
They didn’t wait for permission to start living; they were doers, and when the time came, they set aside the distractions to get to work.
And that’s what I want: to be rewarded for being industrious and hard working, to make my own way. How cool would it be if I did it too, and not just as college dropouts like them, but as a high school dropout?
Yes, that sounded perfect.
Then, if one day I’m a successful millionaire, they can say, “That’s Bill Berry, he’s successful, and he didn’t even finish high school.”
But then, words my mom had repeated time and time again echoed in my head: If you don’t go to college, you won’t be able to get a decent job.
I admitted that she could have a point there. I’d started job hunting right after I turned sixteen, but the efforts had been largely fruitless until I got the job at Little Caesars Pizza. And while it did give me something to write in the work experience section of a job application, I knew it wouldn’t make me more desirable to higher-paying employers.
So, maybe she’s right. If I don’t go to college, maybe I won’t have any prospects.
I’ve always wanted to do “my own thing,” but I don’t even know what my thing is, and now I have to choose a path, whether I know the way or not.
It felt hopeless, and I didn’t know what to do, but then the voice in my head spoke, and it offered a choice:
“If you don’t go to college, you’ll be responsible for yourself all the rest of your days. You’ll have to make your own way every day and create your own destiny. There will never be rest, no safety net, and you’ll never be able to take your foot off the gas, but you’ll be in charge of yourself. Do you accept these terms?”
Without a second’s hesitation, the answer exploded in my mind: “Yes! One thousand times, yes!”
I waited for the voice to answer, but it said nothing. There was nothing else to say.
I couldn’t explain it, but I knew that this moment had changed everything.
Destiny had knocked, and I had answered.
Now I just have to go figure it out.
So, what next? I wondered to myself.
If I fix my truck, I’ll have greater mobility, and that would give me more options. But to do that, I’ll need to make more money.
So tomorrow, I’m going job hunting.
Chapter 4: Job Hunting
I remembered my mom once saying, “When you don’t have a job, job hunting becomes your job.” And while technically I had a job, Little Caesars was only part-time, and I needed more work.
So the next morning, I woke up, showered, and put on my nicest clothes: old jeans and a new-ish black XXL Quicksilver t-shirt that anyone with a lick of fashion sense would have known was three sizes too big for me. Then, knowing I’d be doing a lot of walking, I put on my generic skate shoes. They smelled of flour, oil, and spoiled grease after wearing them at Little Caesars, but they were the only ones I had.
Loading my pockets with keys, two pens, and my wallet, I let myself out the front door of our little two-bedroom apartment. The place wasn’t much to look at, and in a notoriously bad neighborhood, but I knew my mom was working hard to provide for us. And of the four places we’d lived since the divorce, this was the first where I’d had a room of my own. At all the others, I’d slept on the living room sofa. So despite its shortcomings, it felt plush.
I made my way to the alleyway behind our unit, passing the carport where my truck sat collecting cobwebs. The beat-up Dodge Ram 50 pickup with peeling brown paint had been a 17th birthday present from my dad.
I’d gotten to drive it for a few months before its transmission blew out. Then I towed it home, hoping to get it fixed. I even called a repair guy to come by and give a quote, but I couldn’t come up with the $1,600 he was asking for, so it’s been sitting there ever since.
Periodically, my mom would ask, “When are you gonna get your truck fixed?”
And I’d say, “I’m working on saving up for it.”
“Okay,” she’d say, unconvinced.
I was trying to save, but never seemed to get any closer. The money disappeared faster than I could make it, a problem I had plenty of time to think about as I walked for miles beneath the California sun. Downtown Escondido sat several miles away, so I set off for Valley Parkway, the east–west spine of the city where many businesses were clustered. If I was going to find work, it felt like the best place to start.
I reached a busy corner where cars were backed up waiting for the red light to change. Having arrived, I suddenly felt very self-conscious and exposed. I’d imagined myself proudly walking from business to business collecting application after application like a boss, but now that I was here, standing on the blistering sidewalk in front of all these people, I began to doubt my plan and myself.
I was scared.
I stopped and stood awkwardly, looking around, not sure what to do. Two of the intersection’s corners had gas stations, and the other had a fast-food place.
Hmm, which of these places would I like to work at? I thought to myself. And just as quickly came the answer: none of them.
That was the truth of it; I didn’t want to work at any of them. But I need a job, and all of them could potentially be a job, so I guess all of them?
I walked into the closest gas station and saw a long line at the register. Okay, new problem: do I cut to the front and just ask for an application, or do I wait in line and then ask? As I considered this, another person came up behind me, and I got nervous, so I pretended to shop to kill time. Maybe, if I’m patient, the line will die down, I thought. Minutes passed, but no matter how long I waited, more people kept coming in. I figured that if I waited much longer, the cashier would get suspicious and think I was trying to steal something, and I definitely wouldn’t get hired if he thought I was a thief. So I grabbed a small bag of peanuts with a big sticker that read $0.99 and got in line. When I got to the front, the attendant quickly rang me up and said, “That will be $1.06.”
I handed him the $20 bill I had, and he gave me back $18.94 in change.
I was on the verge of chickening out, but then, trying to make it seem like an afterthought, I asked, “Could I get an application?”
The attendant didn’t even look at me. “We’re all out. Next!” already motioning the next customer forward.
I walked out of the store feeling completely deflated. Not only had I failed to get an application, but I’d also spent money I didn’t have on peanuts I didn’t want. That $20 is all I have, and the $18.94 left over has to cover lunch and last me the rest of the day.
At this rate, I’ll be broke before I get ten applications, I thought.
I walked to the other gas station to try again. This station was much nicer, and there were two cashiers, so the line wasn’t backed up. I asked if I could get an application, and the lady behind the counter pulled out a pad of them, the kind that have gum along one edge so the pages can be torn out. Then, she peeled one off and said, “Here ya go.”
I thanked her and walked out.
That’s one, I thought. If I can get one, I can get twenty.
With this one victory under my belt, I gained a little confidence. Walking business to business, I collected job applications as if that were my job. I walked into every store imaginable, from retail stores like Levi Strauss to office buildings with company names I’d never heard of, fast food joints, and supermarkets. I was willing to try anything.
By noon, I’d collected twenty-two job applications.
Then, knowing they had sit-down dining, I walked to Round Table Pizza. I ordered a drink and a slice of pizza, and as I paid, I asked them for a job application. Once I had my food, I grabbed a booth near the back and filled out all twenty-three paper applications, including the one they’d just given me. It was tedious, but I didn’t have much to write in the “previous employment” section, so it went pretty quickly.
I got up to retrace my steps, and as I passed the register, I turned in the application to the manager and asked when I could come in for an interview. He said they’d look it over and call me if they were interested. I thanked him, then went back to all twenty-two of the other places I’d gotten applications from and turned them in. At each place, I asked to see the manager or inquired as to when I could return for an interview. Most answered the same: we’ll call you if we're interested. But two places seemed interested.
The manager at the Levi’s store said she’d look it over and call me.
The other was a blank-faced office building that did lord only knows what. But what I do know is that when I handed my application to the receptionist, she said that new employees start at $16 an hour. And for $16 an hour, I don’t need to know what they do; I’m interested!
I got interview callbacks from both, but Levi’s was a no-go. I clicked with the manager, and I felt good about the interview. But later, I heard from a friend that she’d hired someone she knew, so I didn’t really have a chance.
The interview at the office building was harder to gauge.
The interviewer asked a lot of questions, and it felt like it was going okay, but I couldn’t really get the gist of it. And it’s not like I could admit that I didn’t know what they did or what the job was, so I answered all her questions vaguely, hoping something would stick.
Then she asked, “What would you say is your favorite subject in school?”
With no hesitation, I said, “Theater and Psychology.”
At this, she visibly perked up, so I talked more about that and how, as a teenager, I’d lived up on a mountain far away from any of my friends and, having little else to do, read an entire bookshelf’s worth of my mom’s self-help books. These books were interesting to me and covered topics like relationships and healthy communication.
The interviewer ate this up and asked when I could start. Not wanting to seem desperate, I told her the following Monday would be great, and she gave me paperwork to fill out.
I walked out of that interview feeling like I could fly.
Now I had my job at Little Caesars, where I’d worked my way up from $4.10 an hour when I’d started to $5.25 an hour as assistant manager.
And, I had this new job that paid $16 an hour.
I didn’t have a clue what I’d be doing, but they thought I’d be a good fit.
The following Monday, I showed up on time and was directed to the third floor. Once there, a fast-moving man in a black three-piece suit said, “Follow me,” and took off down a hallway. I fell in behind him and was led to a large open room with high ceilings. Before us stood a call center with 30+ people seated in cubicles; some were dressed nicely, but most wore casual pants and T-shirts. One guy in particular looked like he might be homeless, with long scraggly hair and a black Metallica “Ride the Lightning” t-shirt. Of course, this was who the manager walked me over to introduce me to. Metallica guy glared over the top of his glasses, then instructed me to “Find a chair, sit down, and buckle up.”
Doing as I was told, I returned with a chair and sat.
He looked me straight in the face and said very seriously, “Now I’m gonna show you how this is done.” Putting on his headset and typing a few keys on the keyboard, he waited for something I couldn’t hear to happen in the headset.
In a new voice that could’ve melted concrete, he said, “Good morning, could I speak with Holly, please?” He paused for a moment before saying, “Yes, this is Tom, and I’m calling in regards to a survey you filled out; it says here you suffer from chronic neck and back pain.” There was another pause as he waited for the person on the other end to give confirmation, then he continued. “Well, I'm calling because it’s our understanding that YOU’RE AN ABSOLUTE FUCKING BITCH!!!” he screamed before slamming the headset down on the table.
I flew back in my chair, completely taken aback by his outburst.
He looked at me with his big, crazy eyes, then, spreading his hands wide like he was about to tell me how big a fish he’d caught, he whispered in his sweet-sounding voice, “Sometimes they hang up. But that’s all there is to it.” He turned back to the screen, which listed all the lady’s information. With the mouse, he clicked a box that said “hung up”, then clicked the next name on the list and started the process over.
I sat there for the next hour as he made call after call.
It was numbing. I started to imagine that his salt-and-pepper chin stubble was growing a little more with each rejection. Which is what I came to understand was our job: getting rejected. We’d call about some survey these poor people filled out so long ago; most of them claimed they didn’t even remember having done it. Probably one of those giveaway drawings you often see people signing up for at malls or fairs, the ones that promise you a chance to win a brand new car or cruise vacation.
I’d always heard those give-aways were just information-gathering ploys so that data peddlers could sell people’s information to telemarketers and solicitors. Nothing I was seeing here dispelled that notion.
Tom cut into my thoughts: “When we actually get someone to set an appointment, our in-the-field sales reps will meet with the customer and try to sell them a crazy expensive bed with all kinds of bells and whistles, buttons that make it go up and down, woowoo.”
Looking around the very bed-less office, I asked. “Where are the beds?”
Tom looked around as if he was seeing the space for the first time and said, “I don’t know, they must keep them in a warehouse somewhere.”
“So, do we get to go on a field trip and see one, or do they bring one in so we can all try it?”
“Nope, not likely. I've been here for three years, and I’ve never seen one,” he said.
“Not even in a picture?” I asked
“Not even in a picture,” he answered soberly. But what do you need to see it for? You’ve seen a bed before. Just set the appointment and call out; that’s all there is to it.”
Right then, the man in the black suit stood up and shouted, “Everybody UP!”
On cue, everyone in the room stood up. Tom whispered to me, “Now we all have to stand until we close a sale; it’s supposed to make us more energetic or some strategic salesy bullshit, whatever. Hopefully, we’ll get a decent list and close some of these fuckers.” We stood for the next thirty minutes, during which a handful of the other reps loudly called out, “Sale!” Each time this happened, the black-suited man would run over and take over the phone call. He’d confirm the appointment and ensure the person on the other end of the line had sufficient credit to finance the product, if they decided to buy. If everything checked out, the rep was allowed to sit down. After this happened a few more times, Tom said, “Closing the appointment is only the first step; the field rep still has to make the sale for you to get the bonus. One month, I made over 30 appointments, but only a couple went all the way. It sucks to do that much work and get nothing.”
From what I’d seen so far, I couldn’t imagine anyone making any bonus money. Turning to Tom, I asked skeptically, “Does anyone do well at this?”
“Oh yeah, see that lady?” he pointed to a woman wearing oversized glasses, a food-stained grey Minnie Mouse shirt, and grey sweatpants with elastic ankle cuffs. “That’s Bridgett. She’s the number one rep every month. You could learn a lot from her.”
I watched her for a minute, but couldn’t see anything that stood out more than anyone else. “Why’s she so good?”
“Man, she gets on the phone with these old people, and in two minutes, it’s like they’ve known each other for years. She’ll be talking about dogs with them one minute and cancer treatments the next. One time, she closed a lady whose husband had died two days before; she’s a pitbull.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” I said.
“Why not?” Tom asked flatly
“Because… That just seems wrong.”
“The only thing wrong in this office is turning in an empty booking sheet.”
“But I don’t have stories or know about cancer treatments; how am I supposed to sell this thing?”
Tom looked at me for a second, then, nodding his head towards the computer screen, he launched another call. When the person answered, he said in a collegic-sounding voice, “Hi there, is this Mrs. Goldmann? It is, oh, wonderful, my name’s Neil Goldmann.” He pauses. “Oh, I’m sure it’s no relation, but you never know. If we go back far enough, I guess we’re all related.” Then he let out a laugh so fake I couldn’t believe it. Turning to me with an exaggerated look of self-importance, he motioned to his chest with one hand in a gesture of false modesty. Then he silently mouthed the words, She’s eating out of my hand.
Eventually, the call neared its conclusion, but Tom still hadn’t closed the deal; I couldn’t actually hear her, but imagined her saying, “Well, let me talk to my husband about it. Can you call us back tomorrow?”
Tom didn't flinch. “Mrs. Goldmann, I understand that completely; after twenty-three years of marriage, you know that communication with your husband is key to a happy relationship. But I just have to tell you that the consultation with one of our reps is normally $250, but if you make the appointment today, we’re waiving that fee. Think how happy Mr. Goldmann will be when he finds out you’ve saved him $250. And the beauty of it is, there’s no obligation to buy, so if you ultimately decide not to make an investment into healthier sleep for you and your husband, the entire service and evaluation is free — won’t cost you a dime. I can promise you that, Goldmann to Goldmann.” He goes silent for a few moments, then, clenching his fist hard, he whips his elbow downwards in a victorious motion. Then he says, “Mrs. Goldmann, you are not going to regret this. I sleep on mine every night, and it’s a dream. Let me put you on hold for one second while I grab my manager and have him authorize your free consultation; you just hold on one minute.” Clicking mute on the headset, he stood up and shouted, “Sale.” The suit guy came running. Once he’d confirmed things, he high-fived Tom and went off to put a checkmark next to Tom’s name on a big whiteboard.
Tom put the headset back on and said, “Alright, we’re on the board, let’s get another one!”
“Are we just supposed to lie to them?”
Looking wounded, Tom tilted his head back and said, “Nah man, you just gotta make the sale.”
Without realizing it, I cracked my knuckles.
I sat with Tom the rest of that day and was told that tomorrow I’d be at my own terminal. I asked Tom what I should do, and he said, “Just follow the script. You'll be fine.”
The next day, I tried my best, but no one was interested in the bed I wanted them to buy, the bed I couldn’t even describe because I’d never seen one. One lady asked me what sizes it came in and what the price differences were. I didn’t know; I’d been told absolutely nothing about the product. I finally started describing it as being like a hospital bed, but for your home. Well, that description certainly didn’t go over well with the older folks. The best thing I could say about my second day is that no one cursed me out.
On the third day, I finally completed a full sheet of leads. I didn’t make any sales, but I felt a small sense of accomplishment just for getting through one. I got up from my desk and told the manager. He looked surprised, then, typing a few keystrokes on his computer, he said, “I just assigned you a new list.”
I went back to my desk.
I started with the first of the 500 new names, but no one on this list was interested in setting appointments either. I went home that night thinking the job might not be for me. As I plopped down on the sofa, I became aware that my hands hurt. But I couldn’t figure out why? I started thinking back over my day to see if something would come to mind, and as soon as I thought about sitting at my call center desk, I absentmindedly cracked my knuckles, which hurt. It hit me. After each phone rejection, I was unknowingly cracking my knuckles. And after three days of it, my hands were swollen and in pain. My first thought was that I needed to go to the store and find one of those little foam stress balls that are usually printed to look like tiny planet Earths, just to keep my hands busy. But that thought was immediately followed by, Why the heck do I want a job that causes me that much stress? Everything about it sucks; this isn't for me.
So, the next day, I no-showed my telemarketing shift. I didn’t quit; I just stopped showing up. I was done. I waited two weeks before going back in to pick up my check, and when I did, I timed it so I could sneak in midafternoon when I thought no one from the call center would see me. The payroll lady barely looked up as she handed over an envelope with my name on it. I’d only worked there three days, but when I opened the envelope, I’d made as much as I usually did in two weeks at Caesars.
I liked the money, and I needed to make more money, but doing something else. I have to find something else.
Chapter 5: The Crusher
The job hunt was back on, and with the holiday season fast approaching, I tried Mervyn’s, a local department store.
When I turned in my application, the secretary told me that they needed to hire 100 short-term employees to handle the holiday rush.
I hoped that would mean I’d get a shot at it, and luckily, a few days later, I got a callback for an interview.
I went and was hired.
They started me in the men’s department, which was a smart move. Being male, I at least knew the basics when it came to the products.
But as the manager showed me around, I realized I still had a lot to learn. He explained that my primary duty would be restocking displays whenever customers depleted them. He taught me how to navigate the stockroom and explained that there should always be an assortment of sizes and styles available on the rack. While we were working on one of these racks, a middle-aged female shopper asked if we had one of the “Blue ones in extra large?”
The manager smiled and said, “Let me go to the stock room and check for you.”
I followed him back, and he said, “This is a perfect learning opportunity. See if you can find her a blue one in extra large.”
I went through the rack thoroughly, then did it a second time, but there weren’t any more blue ones in her size.
He looked at me and said, “OK, we don’t have it, so what is the best thing we can do for her?”
“Tell her we’re currently out but will probably get more in soon?”
“That might work,” he said, “but let’s try this: Pick two different extra-large shirts, and when we get back out there, explain that we’re out of the blue but that you found two potential alternatives.”
I selected two different shirts from the shelves: one purple and one an obnoxious green. I’d picked the ugly green one, thinking it might drive her towards the purple one. Then I walked back out to the main floor and offered them to her. To my surprise, she took the ugly green one and thanked me for the help.
My manager smiled, “A lot of times, people are just trying to get something for everyone on their shopping list; they aren’t attached to one style over another. So long as it’s the right size, they’ll take it.”
“Hmm, interesting,” I said.
I’d just learned a subtle yet effective sales technique.
About an hour after that, a huge touring bus pulled up and parked illegally in the fire lane right outside the store’s main entrance. Forty+ people of Middle Eastern descent poured out of its doors and marched into the store. Once inside, they went straight to the Levi’s wall and started pulling down jeans. Men, women, and children, each grabbing three pairs apiece. I was confused because they weren’t even looking at sizes. Colors or styles didn’t seem to matter; they just took them and got in line to pay. When they reached the front of the line, they all paid in cash.
I watched as an adult placed a wad of $20 bills into a baby’s hand, then held the kid over the counter to deliver the wad to the cashier.
The manager who’d taken me under his wing walked over to where I was watching this and said, “Levi’s is a Jewish company, so they don’t sell their products in countries hostile to the Jews. It creates a black market for Levi’s products in some Middle Eastern countries. One pair can sell for $300 or more over there. So these people come in, and they already know our policy is three pairs per person maximum. Because if we let them, they’d buy every single pair, leaving none for our regular customers. Then they do it again, store after store, until they have a full shipping container. It’s how these families make their living.”
I was shocked to hear this. And until that moment, I’d never even realized that “Levi’s” was a Jewish entity. I guess it makes sense with the name, but until you know something, you just don’t know.
Once the purchases were made, everyone got back on the bus and left. I restocked the Levi’s shelves as best I could. But there were huge gaps in our stock, and many cubbies would remain empty until another shipment of Levi’s arrived the following week.
I liked being in the men’s department. The work was okay, and I was learning about style. I even started investing a little from each paycheck into expanding my wardrobe. But once the holiday rush had passed, fewer and fewer of the seasonal employees appeared on the schedule.
We’d all come aboard knowing we’d be let go, so there were no hard feelings. However, as the other names slowly vanished from the schedule, I was surprised to find mine still listed. And only a week later, I was the only remaining seasonal employee.
The manager who liked me motioned me over, and I figured this was it. With a neutral expression, he said, “Today will be your last day in the men’s department,” and with that, I knew for sure I was being let go, but then he said, “Starting tomorrow, you’ll be reporting directly to me, and I’ll let you know what needs doing. How does that sound?”
Ha! “Sounds great,” I exclaimed.
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow then, 6 am.”
The next day, he led me to a 10-foot-tall A-frame ladder laden with cleaning supplies. He then explained that the valence that ringed the entire store needed to be cleaned. I looked up at the endless facade that gave architectural texture to the otherwise warehouse-like space. It stretched from the women’s section, past jewelry, across the men’s section, past the main entrance doors, over into the home fashions area, through the ladies’ undergarments and seasonal, back to the shoe department, and finally back to us.
Seeing my apprehension, he said, “Like this.” Then he climbed the ladder and showed me how he wanted each of the rails, which were terraced like tiny stairs, to be cleaned from top to bottom. Spray, wipe, spray, and wipe again. “Now you try,” he said.
Climbing up, I found a layer of dust so thick it looked like dryer lint. I sprayed it with the bottle he’d provided, then wiped the first little bit clean, burning through a big wad of paper towels in the process.
Seeing I had the hang of it, the manager said, “OK, let me know when you’re close to running out of supplies, and I’ll get you more.” Then he strode away.
I nodded silently and kept cleaning, thinking to myself that this was going to take all week.
It was easy work, though, which gave me lots of time to think. And, by the time I’d cleaned my way halfway through the women’s department, I was pretty sure I’d figured out what was happening: Most of the regular employees here were lifers. Once hired, they often stayed on for years. This meant that the regular year-round positions were all filled. But the manager and I had worked well together, and I figured he saw something in me he thought worth cultivating. Maybe he’s keeping me busy with these odd jobs to justify my salary until something more permanent opens up.
It was just a theory, but it was the best explanation I could think of as to why I was cleaning a valance that had clearly never been cleaned before.
As I worked, I discovered a few tricks for optimizing the task. For example, once I had a big wad of dirty paper towels, I’d use my long reach to scrub off a long swath of the worst of the dust. Then I’d hit the same area again with a fresh towel, which would then itself be dirty and allow me to wipe out the next big swath. I decided to challenge myself and see if I could clean the entire store in this one shift. But by the time I’d gotten to the end of the women’s section, I’d used up all paper towels. Rather than bother my manager for more, I went to the stock room to grab some rags and a big bucket. Filling the bucket with warm, soapy water, I returned to the task. I found that dipping, wringing out, and wiping with the rags was a much better strategy. I’d use one damp rag to get the worst off, then wipe again with the second rag. I made good time, and the fact that I’d grown up on ladders while working for my parents’ sign company certainly contributed to that.
At the end of the shift, I went to find the manager to tell him I was leaving for the day.
He asked, “So, how far did you get with the valance?”
“It’s done,” I said
If he’d been drinking coffee, he’d have spit it out: “It’s DONE? Like ALL done? You had enough paper towels? I was planning to buy more for tomorrow?”
“Yes, and no, the paper towels ran out in the women’s section, so I switched to rags and a bucket, but it’s all done now. What do you need me to do tomorrow?”
Shaking his head in disbelief, he stood up, intending to go check my work, but then stopped himself and said, “Actually, I know you did a good job. Uhh, tomorrow, let’s put you in the stocking department; they could use some help back there.”
“Yes, sir, what time?”
“6 am,” he said.
“I’ll see you then.”
The next day, I arrived at 6 am as requested, but no one was there. The store was locked up tight. So I waited out front for an hour until someone showed up with a key. This would happen repeatedly in the coming months, and though I couldn’t clock in or prove that I’d been there, my manager always made sure I got paid for the time. He was a good manager, and his belief in me made me want to always give my best.
Once the door was open, I went to the stocking department to see what they needed me to do. This job, it turned out, was all behind the scenes. Emptying trash, making sure each register station had plenty of bags in all the sizes, and, of course, they showed me how to operate “The Machine.”
Back by the loading dock stood a huge trash compactor. It had a series of large steel blocks connected to thick hydraulic arms that, together, would crush anything placed inside. Once the initial crush was complete, a second set of hydraulics would press the remaining material horizontally into a forty-foot shipping container, which was pinned and chained to the outside of the building. When they taught me how to use “The Machine,” they made sure to scare me with stories of people being maimed or killed after being careless with similar machines. But I’d grown up in a shop environment and knew to respect power tools. Plus, you had to press two buttons at once, one with each hand, then use a foot pedal to operate the crushers. You’d have to go pretty far out of your way to get hurt doing it. The one other rule, the most unbending one of all, I was told, is never take anything you find in the trash. It’s not for your perusal or personal collection. If it’s in the trash, it stays in the trash. Break the rule once, and you’re fired, no warnings. Then they pointed to a lone eye-in-the-sky camera that hung ever vigilantly over the loading dock.
I just nodded my head. It all sounded easy enough. I’m not much for taking things that aren’t mine.
The next few weeks were uneventful, and most days in the stocking department, I barely saw anyone, completely on my own and unsupervised. Then, one day, while I was tossing out some trash, I saw a pair of shoes in the bin. Looking closer, I realized it was the same brand and style of skateboard shoe that I’d been eyeing in the shoe department just a few days before. I checked the size, and they were ten and a half, my size. Weird, why would a brand-new pair of shoes be in the trash?
Knowing I was breaking one of the cardinal rules of trash disposal, I picked them up for a quick inspection. They genuinely looked brand new, and the only hint I could find as to why they might’ve been thrown away was the two tiny pebbles lodged in the tread on the bottom. My guess was that someone had returned them, and the person at the returns department, seeing they’d been worn once, threw them out.
I looked down at my own, falling-apart shoes, then at the brand-new ones that the universe was practically begging me to take.
Ughh, this is hard.
I thought about asking my manager if I could have them. I was fairly certain he’d tell me to go ahead, but I also didn’t want him to think I was trying to steal from the company. And I knew the rules; I was supposed to throw everything away.
I started to drop them in the compactor, but then I stopped.
I can’t do it, I thought, it feels so wrong. A little part of me was dying at the thought of the waste.
I looked up at the camera and considered making a pleading motion. Maybe whoever was on the other side would have mercy on the poor guy who really needed new shoes but couldn’t afford the $65 they were asking for them. But I restrained myself.
I knew that once a month, the giant steel vault where all the trash got compacted would be taken away and its contents incinerated. I thought of the people who’d worked, like I was working, to create these shoes. So much effort, just for them to be worn once, returned, and thrown away. How many pairs of shoes does this happen to? How much is wasted each day in the name of corporate policy?
At that point, I was convinced I’d be justified in taking them, but still, I didn’t. They weren’t mine, and their fate was out of my hands.
I dropped them in the hopper and watched as “The Machine” slowly ate them.
I cast a long look at the evil eye in the sky.
I felt like I was back in high school, once again subject to a system that operated by codes and mores not aligned with my own. A place where rules mattered more than what was right; where rules mattered more than people. I realized this was not where I was supposed to be. I considered quitting on the spot, but I also felt loyalty to my manager, who’d gone so far out of his way to make a place here for me, and I didn’t want to let him down.
So I threw in another can of trash, then another, and another, doing my part, feeding “The Machine.”
* * *
A week or two later, the job threw me a new surprise. When I got to the loading dock, I found a giant pile of naked bodies piled head-high.
This giant, unmoving mass of stark white forms was twisted into shapes not even the most advanced Twister player would consider attempting. Many of the forms were missing hands or whole limbs, while others had no heads.
As if he’d read my thoughts, my favorite manager materialized at my side: “Corporate sent in two truckloads of new mannequins over the weekend, so the staff had to work late shifts to get them all switched out. These are the old ones, and they all have to be compacted.”
Then he left me to this completely innocent, but dirty-feeling work.
I walked over and picked up the closest mannequin. It was a nearly complete woman, everything intact except that at mid-thigh, both her legs had been cleanly sheared off. I thought I might remember her and asked, “Hey, weren’t you in the women’s section? Wearing a one-piece dress that was cut low at the top and high at the bottom?”
Obviously, she didn’t answer, and I carefully loaded her into the hopper. Even with sheared-off legs, she was just tall enough not to fit entirely into the lower compartment of the compactor. I’d never crushed a mannequin before and had no idea how they’d break. Do they mush? Do they pop and send shards of plastic flying off in every direction? I had no idea, so I put on some safety glasses before holding the buttons and stepping on the foot lever.
The whole apparatus whirred loudly, and the steel blocks began to move in slow motion. Not having been built for speed, the huge steel plates crawled forward, taking at least thirty seconds before they began to crush her. I knew it wasn’t a real person, but the likeness still gave me a sense of unease. Next, I loaded two forms at once; they sat in an awkward embrace as they were crushed. After that, I loaded five at once, hopeful that the increased number would create a mass of plastic that wouldn’t feel so human, but as they compacted, they got tangled into one another, clogging the works. I took breaks to poke at them with an old push broom, attempting to get more of the parts deep enough into the jaws to be crushed. Eventually, they got so stuck that I had to climb into the hopper and jump up and down on them. I looked at the eye-in-the-sky and felt its silent judgment, then, motioning towards the hopper, I mimed defensively, “There’s no other way to get them to go down.”
It took two more crushes to move the last of that group into the belly of the beast.
After that, I limited it to two bodies at a time, because it was the most efficient. Throughout, I grew ever more horror-stricken by the process. Is this what guards’ experiences in concentration camps had been like? Had they gone through something similar, but with real people? Were they sick at first, followed by attempts to make the process more efficient, just to get it over with? Did they overstep, like I had when I’d loaded all five mannequins in at once, only to realize their mistake? When I’d loaded the five, my hope had been to be faster and more efficient, but I’d only prolonged the “agony” and time needed to dispose of the five.
I could see, without wanting to, how German soldiers could have gone through a similar, albeit far more horrifying process in their quest to find the most efficient and effective ways to dispose of a mountain of bodies. I tried not to think of guards making similar mistakes, but with real people.
How could people do things like that to one another?
It took me two whole shifts, twelve mind-numbing hours in total, to crush them all.
And at the end of that second day, I clocked out knowing this job wasn’t for me. But even knowing that, I figured I’d stay on until I’d saved enough to fix my truck, or figured out what it is I’m actually here to do.
Chapter 6: Always Come Prepared
I rode my bicycle home from my morning shift at the retail store, and as I walked through the front door of our apartment, my mom handed me a newspaper clipping.
Technical theater internship program at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, now accepting applications.
Wow, that sounds cool, I thought.
We’d moved to Escondido halfway through my 10th-grade school year, and once I’d settled in at my new high school, I’d become interested in theater, or more accurately, the backstage theater/stagecraft program. Being painfully introverted, I had little interest in going on stage or being in front of people. But the backstage work was great. I got to build sets, run shows, and learn the basics of sound and lighting. I liked it a lot, so the potential of getting a real job in the field was exciting.
Most days, I’d spend the two hours I had between my morning and evening shifts resting or getting lunch, but today I skipped both so I could ride my bicycle to the California Center for the Arts to fill out an application.
Ten days later, I got a call, and the person on the line said, “We’d like to interview you for the position.”
I felt my heart rate spike in a good way! Every other job I’d ever had was just a job; I didn’t want to be a telemarketer, or make pizza, or work retail. But theater? That could be fun, and maybe it would even turn into a career!
The voice on the phone continued, “We have two interview slots available, next Monday or Tuesday morning. Would either of those work for you?”
Quickly considering my current work schedule, I said, “Monday morning would be great, what time?”
“10 am, we’ll see you then.” ::click::
I whooped loudly in excitement. “Gaw, that would be a dream, I have to get it, please lord, let me get it!”
But to do that, I knew I’d need to stand out, that I’d have to look sharp, professional.
On cue, a movie-like memory began to play in my mind.
* * *
I was curled up on the couch under a big, hand-crocheted blanket that swallowed up my little second-grade body. I’d stayed home sick from school again, a normal part of the routine when you have a life-threatening heart condition.
My mom was watching TV, some morning show with grown-ups talking about grown-up problems, stuff I didn’t understand or care about.
But then the host brought out a kid.
His dark hair was slicked neatly to the side, and he wore a black suit that actually fit. Not the wrinkled, ill-fitting, cheap kind of suit I saw kids wear to church, either. This one was tailored and crisp, with a shiny tie and polished shoes. He didn’t fidget or slouch. He walked out calmly and sat in the guest chair like he’d done this a hundred times. And it didn’t seem to bother him that his feet couldn’t even reach the floor.
The host smiled and leaned toward him. “Good morning, Andrew. Thank you for being here today.”
“Thank you,” he said with a warm smile. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”
“You’re looking quite snazzy in that suit! Are you on your way to an important meeting?”
“Well, nothing is more important than meeting with you,” he said politely. “But yes, I have an appointment with my financial
advisor this afternoon.”
That got a laugh from the audience. The host raised an eyebrow. “Your financial advisor? I’m,” she mumbled unintelligibly, “years old, and I don’t even have a financial advisor! How old are you?”
“I’m twelve years old, and in sixth grade,” he said. “But I’ve always been interested in money. I started investing my allowance when I was five and looking for opportunities to grow my nest egg.”
My 2nd-grade eyes widened at this kid doing grown-up stuff. And I found myself hanging on every word.
He went on. “Right now, I’m launching a business with a few of my classmates. We’re creating an investment plan for kids, so they can make a million dollars and retire by thirty-five.”
“A million dollars?” The host chuckled. “So that’s your plan, huh? Retire by thirty-five?”
Andrew smiled. “Sort of. My real goal is to make my first million by age eighteen. But the business comes first; once it’s self-sustaining, I can focus on expanding.”
The audience clapped. Andrew just sat there, legs swinging beneath the chair, composed, serious, and completely in control.
Then the show cut to a commercial.
I sat, frozen, staring at the screen.
He was just a kid. A kid like me. But somehow he was talking about stocks, advisors, and million-dollar goals, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He didn’t even seem nervous. He had a plan. A real plan.
I pulled the blanket tighter around me, not because I was cold, but because something inside me had shifted. It was like a door in my mind had opened, and behind it was this wild new thought: What if I could do that too?
Not retire by eighteen. That part felt like superhero stuff. But be a millionaire by thirty-five? That sounded possible. Big, and a little daunting, but possible.
I didn’t know anything about money. I had a few dollars in a plastic piggy bank and sometimes got quarters for helping bring in groceries. But something about the way Andrew talked, clear, direct, goal-oriented, lit a fire in me.
I didn’t want to just watch kids like Andrew on TV. I wanted to be one.
When the show came back on, they didn’t mention Andrew again. Just another adult guest talking about something I immediately forgot.
But Andrew stayed with me. He had a dream, and he believed in it so much that others started to believe it, too.
So, I set a goal for myself right there, the first goal I’d ever set. I want to be a millionaire by age thirty-five.
I didn’t know how I’d get there, but if Andrew could figure it out, I believed I could, too.
* * *
The vision fizzled away, and my awareness returned to the present.
After all those years battling my heart, I’d almost forgotten about Andrew and my goal of being a millionaire by thirty-five, but now, it was again fresh in my mind.
Well, if I’m going to be like Andrew, I need to start being more like Andrew, I thought, but how? What was his secret?
I again envisioned Andrew on the talk show, remembering how he’d looked so professional in his suit. He’d worn a suit because he took his appearance on the show seriously, and he took himself seriously.
That’s it, I thought, Andrew’d worn a suit because it’s what you do when it matters. And this interview at the California Center for the Arts mattered.
I’d never owned a suit before, and I didn’t know where to start. But spying a department store catalog in a pile of junk mail, I started flipping through it until I found something I liked, a black double-breasted get-up that looked pretty hip. I told my mom I needed a suit, and she agreed to drive me to the store.
When I tried it on, it hung unappealingly on my rail-thin frame, not looking nearly as good on me as it had on the male model in the picture. But there wasn’t time to have it tailored before the interview, and it was better than anything else I had, so it’d have to do.
I took it to the cashier, and she rang me up. “That’ll be $321.74,” she said with a smile.
Oh, s#it, I thought, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. I didn’t have enough money; I had at most $200 in my account. I sighed softly to myself and was about to ask her to cancel the transaction when my mom’s arm reached out from behind me.
Passing her credit card across the counter, she said, “We’ll just call it an early birthday present.”
“Oh, that’s a great present,” said the cashier, “What’s the occasion?”
“Big job interview,” my mom answered.
“Well,” said the cashier as she put the receipt in the bag, “I have a feeling you’re gonna get it.”
The cashier smiled at me encouragingly, and I smiled back, but I felt super uncomfortable because she was cute and I didn’t know what to say.
When we got back to the car, I said to my mom, “Thank you for the suit.”
“You’re welcome, now get in there and knock their socks off.”
Looking long out the window, I said, “I’ll try.”
“Try?” she challenged, “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
I laughed, “Yes, you and master Yoda are right. There is no try.”
* * *
The following Monday, I went to the interview. After checking in with the receptionist, she told me to take a chair with the three other hopefuls. These “hopefuls” were two men and one woman, all older than me, and all dressed in the simple black shirt and pants typical for theater techs. I was, for sure, the best dressed, but now I wondered whether that might work against me.
I didn’t have long to stew on it, though, because moments later, a man and woman came in and invited us into an adjacent room for the interview. I hesitated, unsure who they wanted first, but the woman waved her hand encouragingly, “Come on, all of you, it’s a group interview.”
This rattled my nerves. A group interview?! I’d never heard of such a thing, and certainly not considered it when I’d mentally run through and rehearsed every imaginable scenario in preparation for this moment. My stomach knotted in fear. I was best in one-on-one conversations, not in groups, and now there’d be an audience. I felt a droplet of sweat trickle down my armpit and glide along my ribs, uninterrupted by the too-big shirt and suit jacket hanging over my shoulders. Entering the next room, we seated ourselves around a big meeting-room-style table.
As the interviewers introduced themselves, I noticed they weren’t in suits either, more business casual, so I was certain I was overdressed. We hadn’t even started yet, and I felt like things were going wrong.
Luckily, once the questions started, my answers seemed to hit. I told them that during my senior year of high school, I’d taken three periods of drama and one of stagecraft. And that I’d been involved with every show the school produced from start to finish. From building props or stage scenery to running lights and sound, whatever was needed, I could do it. I even had a letter of recommendation from my high school drama teacher, saying I’d been one of his top students. They seemed genuinely interested in all of that, and I dared, just a little, to believe I still had a shot.
Then they hit me with something I’d never anticipated.
“So, Mr. Berry, what would you say is your greatest weakness?”
Ughhh, I was stunned to silence. I had no idea how to answer the question.
I sat there, brain whirling, waiting for something clever or witty to come out of my mouth, but nothing did. And I couldn’t see any way to turn the question’s inherent negative bent into a positive response.
Lacking anything good to say, I figured I’d just be totally honest, and tell them what my greatest weakness is, which was… Which was…?
Gah, I couldn’t think what my real greatest weakness was either.
Time passed, and the silence grew awkward, so the interviewer tried to help: “Well, what’s something you struggle with?”
But now my mind was exploding at the thought of not getting the job, and I sat there completely frozen.
The female interviewer looked at her cohort and said, “Well, let’s just move on and let him think about it.” And they did, and blessedly, they didn’t come back to ask me about it again.
When it was over, I left thinking I’d blown it. But a few days later, they called to tell me I’d been hired, and that put me on top of the world.
I asked when they wanted me to start, and they said they would only need me a few times per month.
Hmm, that might be perfect, I thought. I still had my retail and pizza jobs on the regular, so if they only needed me here and there, it’d be easier to juggle everything around.
A few days later, I attended an orientation and received a tour of the facility, where they outlined their general expectations for us. The first being, “always arrive prepared.” They said it several times, in fact. “When you come to work, always bring gloves, a Leatherman, and a flashlight. And bring them every shift, no exceptions!”
Wanting to be a good tech, I brought them in, religiously, for two months. However, we never ended up using any of these items; most shifts would find me stuck in the sound booth, with little more to do than raise or lower a slider when the person on stage below hollered up for it to be adjusted.
And the situation was similar on the lightboard. I’d find myself sitting in one booth or the other, often for hours, without hearing a single instruction relevant to me.
I came to understand that the reason for this was that the touring shows that came through all had their own people for programming the cues into the light and sound boards. And they had their own load-in and load-out crew, so there weren’t any sets for us to assemble, no scenery to build or fix, and no shows for us to run. Most nights, the most exciting thing I’d get to do was mop the stage before clocking out. So I stopped bringing my flashlight, gloves, and Leatherman, and instead brought a book to fill all the downtime.
But then I showed up for one shift and found two men on deck whom I didn’t know. Our big boss called us all together and introduced the two men as backstage veterans. Both had worked on Broadway and had résumés filled with notable achievements. We also learned that they both held college degrees, one in theater and the other in electrical engineering. Then one of the men said, “If you really want to make a career of this, you’d better get a degree and work twice as hard as the competition, because it’s one of the most competitive fields around.”
My heart sank at that, because while I was unafraid of a hard day’s work, I’d given up on ever pursuing college. I guess I’d thought of theater as a meritocracy, a place where a person who worked hard enough and pushed hard enough could rise to the top, but here were two people who’d been to the top, and they were saying this was as far as I could go without college.
After this “pep talk” concluded, our boss broke us into two groups. Half the interns were assigned to the guy with the theater degree, and the rest of us to the guy with the electrical engineering degree.
Once the others had left, our guy said, “Maintenance is one of the most important parts of a theater tech’s job; today, we’re going to learn how to disassemble and clean the three primary types of theater lights. Then, we’ll refocus and trim the beams. Basically, reset everything to its standard configuration. When a touring production that calls for custom lighting is loaded out, you always reset everything before the next show loads in.” He looked towards the backstage area, whistled to get whoever was back there’s attention, then pointed upwards. Moments later, the first electric, a heavy steel bar decked out with dozens of lights, descended from the rafters above our heads. When it had been lowered to chest level, he whistled again, and the bar froze in place. He then disassembled one of the lights, cleaned all the parts as he went, and showed us the different mounting styles and safety systems in use. He then reassembled it. He repeated this action with the two other styles of lights, throwing in anecdotes about their history, what their capabilities were, biographical facts about the people who’d invented them, ways they would most frequently break or fail, and more. It was amazing how much he knew and how well he could recall. After reassembling these examples, he instructed us to select a light and follow the steps he’d taken. We were then to repeat this process for all three light styles. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll be walking around to help if you get stuck.” This was not a difficult task for me; the way he’d shown us meshed well with my learning style, and, aside from one snafu with the beam trim plates, which I’d reinserted in the wrong order, I was able to do everything else without assistance. After we’d all finished this initial test and shown we could do it competently, he whistled again, and the second and third electrics began their descent from above. As these two additional bars arrived amongst us, we looked at the dizzying number of lights, all coated in dust and cobwebs, all needing to be disassembled, cleaned, and refocused. It felt like there were hundreds, but more likely just seventy to eighty in all, but still, a monumental task that would take us all day, and probably more, to complete. Then he broke our group in half again, making two groups of two, and explained that the first group would stay on stage with him to clean “all of the overstage lights,” he motioned to the bars that surrounded us as he said this.
Then he looked at me and the tech beside me and said, “You two will do the same, except you’ll work on the catwalk.” He pointed to the giant steel grid suspended from the theater ceiling, high above the seats where guests would sit to watch a show. With a sly smile, he added, “Hope you’re not afraid of heights.” I looked up at the grid and realized I didn’t even know how to get up there. I’d never been on a grid before. Luckily, the other tech I’d been paired with had been interning for longer than I, and she seemed to know all about it, so I just nodded and pretended like I knew what I was doing. He didn’t say anything else to us, but started directing the two techs who would be staying with him to get going, so she and I made our way offstage. The girl tech led me to a series of steel ladders, which, unlike a normal ladder, had no incline to make them easier to climb. They were ninety degrees straight up. I was usually quite comfortable on ladders, but these felt so different from the ones I’d used before, making them unnerving. We climbed a series of these, one after another, until we were sixty or seventy feet above the ground. Once there, we began with the first bank of lights. To my surprise, they were all turned on.
I shouted down, “Hey, can you turn these off so we can work on them?”
Looking up into the beams of light where my voice had come from, the technician shouted back, “Nope, you need to be comfortable working with lights that are turned on, that way you can focus and trim them appropriately without needing the lighting tech to sit at the board all afternoon flipping switches for you.”
“Got it,” I yelled back.
I reached out to start working on the first light, but it was HOT. Theater lights put off tremendous heat, and all the casing and surrounding parts quickly absorb that heat. The bulb itself you couldn’t touch with a bare hand — and I don’t mean just when it’s hot — I mean not ever, even when it’s cool. If the oils from your skin get on the bulb glass, the temperature difference can cause the bulb to shatter when it reaches full temperature. You have to wear clean gloves to even touch the bulbs.
Looking over at the girl technician I was with, I saw her putting on heavy work gloves. And once donned, she began to disassemble her first light. As she did, a cloud of dust — or was it smoke from her gloves — filled the light of the beam. She cleaned the parts, reassembled the unit, and called down to ask how he wanted it trimmed.
Looking up at us, then surveying the stage, he yelled back, “Trim it so the curtains at audience left don’t catch any of the light.”
She adjusted one of the trim levers, and I saw the light that had been hitting the wall and curtains on the left side of the stage slowly retreat as it was blocked by the steel plate inside. Then she started the second light.
I reached out to work on my light and immediately felt the parts burning my fingers. I pulled back, regretting deeply not having brought my gloves.
A little hopelessly, I said to the female tech, “I don’t suppose you have an extra set of gloves?”
“Nope, every tech should show up to every shift with a light, Leatherman, and a pair of gloves.”
If I wanted sympathy, I wouldn’t find it here, and besides, she was right, and I knew it; I’d shown up unprepared.
I briefly considered going back down to the stage to ask if anyone had an extra pair I could borrow. But if I did, even more people would know I’d shown up unprepared for work. And most likely, no one would give me a pair; I might even be sent home as punishment for my carelessness. Or what if they let me go entirely? The guy just told us how competitive this market is; there’s no room for mistakes. By now, the girl tech was well on her way to having her second light cleaned and focused. Unwilling to fail, I reached forward and grabbed my light to start the disassembly; I could hold a part for about a second before it started to cook me. But cleaning required holding the parts for much longer than that. I continued anyway, feeling my flesh sing, but I powered through it, switching my grip every few seconds to spread the heat to different points on my hands and fingers. It gave me an incentive to work quickly, and I admit I wasn’t cleaning the lights as thoroughly as I should have, but I managed to finish my first just before the other tech finished her second.
Calling down to the head tech, I asked, “How would you like this one?”
Looking up, he said, “Cut it so it’s not hitting the proscenium arch.”
I adjusted the lever until the light was properly cut, then moved to the next. Just five more hours, I told myself, just gotta get through five more hours.
As I cleaned the lights, my thoughts wandered to memories of Little Caesars.
* * *
The most popular item on the menu, aside from pizza, was “Crazy Bread,” essentially a ball of pizza dough cut into strips and baked. When it came out the other end of the oven, the veteran workers would place a thin sheet of wax paper over the sticks and pick them up barehanded. They’d then place them on a wire rack, where they’d be bathed in garlic butter and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. Then they’d pick them up again, barehanded, and put them in a paper bag.
It was the easiest job, so whenever new workers were hired, they always started at the Crazy Bread station. And when it was time to teach them how to make the bread, the veterans would always show them the technique I just described. But the thing is, a normal human off the street can’t pick up Crazy Bread sticks straight out of the oven; it burns the shit out of your hands. The newbie would try, of course, and more often than not, reflexively drop the sticks on the ground and have to start over. They’d be awestruck as to how the veterans could handle the bread so easily, and everyone would laugh because we’d all gone through the exact same orientation. Once they’d been properly hazed, someone would show them how to unload and prep the bread with hand tools so they wouldn’t get burned.
But if they stuck around for a few months, their hands would get used to the heat, and soon enough, they’d be handling the boiling hot breadsticks barehandedly just as easily as the rest of us.
* * *
Snapping back to the present, I made the connection. I’d been handling breadsticks almost daily for the past two years, so I built up a tolerance. And were it not for that tolerance, there’s no way I’d have been able to clean the lights without gloves.
Still, the lesson was learned, and I never again showed up without my light, Leatherman, and gloves. Scorched fingers aside, the tech theater internship was by far the best job I had.
My bosses and coworkers were great, and we were doing something we wanted to be doing, which was different from my other jobs. The others were just jobs; there was no loyalty to anything except the paycheck.
I wanted theater to become a real career for me, but they couldn’t schedule me enough for it to be anything more than a part-time position (I’d asked), and my internship was only for one year; after that, they’d cut me loose, and it would be the end of it.
I guess I’ll just make the most of it and learn as much as I can.
Chapter 7: Mucho Trabajo
A few months after I’d started working as a tech theater intern, my boss, the one who I’d asked for more hours, stopped me in the hall, “Hey, would you be interested in helping out with banquet service?
I knew about the banquet building; it was separate from the theater, but in the same complex. And I’d heard they hosted special events and weddings, that kinda stuff.
He continued, “I know you’re looking for more hours, and the shifts are flexible, so if you’re interested, I’ll put in a good word for you.”
I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t theater, but it was at least close to the theater, so I told him I was interested.
The following week, offers for several banquet shifts appeared on the schedule. Wow, I thought, just months ago I’d been pounding the pavement, praying someone would give me a job; now here I am, working four part-time jobs all at once. This will surely help me build the capital I need to get my truck fixed. And with that increased mobility, I can start moving up in the world!
I double-checked that I was available for these new shifts and, seeing that I was, accepted them all.
I’d never worked in banquet service before. Little Caesars didn’t have a dining room, so I’d never served anyone before. But I figured there would be some training and they’d show me what to do.
HA!
When I arrived for my first shift, the place was a madhouse; guests were arriving within the hour, and no one had time to show me anything. I asked a manager for guidance, and he said, “Yeah, that’s your table.” He pointed to a round table draped in a white tablecloth and said, “Just do what the waitresses do,” then he split.
So I waited by my table, and when people sat down, I poured them water and tried to copy what the other staff were doing. There were no menus to contend with; the dinner was predetermined, and everyone got the same series of dishes. I tried to interact with the people at my table, but whenever I’d try to make eye contact or break in, they’d make a show of not even acknowledging my presence, continuing their conversations more intently and at a higher volume until I buzzed off.
The only exception to this was when I tried to serve a man his entrée from the left side.
He threw up his hands in exasperation and said, “You’re supposed to serve from the right,” emphasizing that side with his right hand, “and pick up from the left!” which he then emphasized with his left.
I pulled the plate back and moved around to serve him from the proper side. As I did, a woman far past an age that necessitated the amount of makeup she’d applied for the evening looked at me like I was an idiot and shook her head disapprovingly. Their exaggerated self-importance planted a seed of disdain in me for haughtiness and pomp.
The best thing I could say about that first night is that it passed quickly — one long whirlwind of setting up, serving, clearing, and breaking down. At the end of the night, I walked down the server’s corridor feeling quite used up. I could have lain down on the dark red tiled floor and slept right there, filthy as it and I were. But there was still work to do. I hefted a large, oval-shaped plastic serving tray loaded with dirty dishes, balanced it on my shoulder with both hands, and tried to load it into a large metal rolling case so it could be taken to the dish area. I’d already loaded dozens of these with no mishap, but I was tired now, and one of the dish stacks tipped over and spilled a silver gravy boat full of now fermented raspberry dressing onto my cheap white tuxedo shirt. The sweet, fruity rank of it filled my nostrils for the rest of the shift. Through all of this, no one paid any attention to me, and I got no breaks; it was just go, go, go. Once the dining room had been cleared, I started rolling the big silver carts full of dirty dishes down to the dishwashing area. Each time I did, a young Hispanic guy would meet me and, with a genuine smile, take the roller cart into the wash area. He was the only person who was friendly all night, so the next time I dropped off a cart, I made a little joke about something.
He smiled but also shrugged, indicating that he spoke no English.
In my very limited Spanish, I made an exaggerated show of wiping my brow and said, “Mucho trabajo” (Lots of work, or at least that’s what I think it means).
He smiled and pointed towards the dish area, saying, “Mucho, mucho!”
Then we both laughed and continued doing our jobs. It wasn’t lost on me that the only person who’d treated me like a human being all night was the Hispanic dishwasher who didn’t speak the same language as me.
Finally, all the dish carts were delivered, and I had a moment to examine the big raspberry-dressing stain on my shirt. As I did, I noticed a large black stain on the top of my left shoulder too; baffled at first, I tried to figure out what had caused it. Then I noticed that many of the other servers had the same thing, notably on just one shoulder—the shoulder they rested the trays on as they carried them back and forth through the dining areas. Walking over to one of the trays, I flipped it over and saw a thin layer of black mold on its bottom. Anytime one of us picked up a tray and rested it on our shoulder, the black stain grew. I shook my head ruefully; I was tired, sweaty, moldy, and had been baptized into banquet service with rancid raspberry dressing. I was soooo ready for this night to be over, but it was my first day, and I wanted to make a good impression, so I looked around for something more to do. As I did, the leading manager, a tall, thin, wiry guy whose legs always walked a little faster than his body ever seemed able to keep up with, came over and said, “I think we’ve got it from here; you can punch out.” Then he shambled away without waiting for an answer.
As he went, I couldn’t help but notice that neither of his shoulders had any of the telltale black mold staining.
* * *
With the addition of these shifts as a banquet server, my schedule was so full that I stopped getting days off. Every day was now a workday. And most days, I worked doubles; I’d have a morning shift at the retail store and a banquet shift that night. Or, I’d work the morning shift at Little Caesars, then have a tech theater event at night.
I was making more money than I ever had before, but I was working very, very hard to do it.
* * *
About two months after I’d started working as a server, I showed up for a shift and clocked in as usual. And also, as usual, it wasn’t clear what I should be doing, so I went and sorted silverware with one of the more seasoned waitresses. I’d learned to go to her whenever I wasn’t sure what to do because she would take time to teach me. But today there was no teaching; she was going on and on about some new guy, Ron.
Apparently, Ron had come on board a few days earlier and was already gaining a reputation. From day one, our manager had given him a lot of responsibility. Ron was now in charge of the main banquet hall. Ron was consulted on decorative options and even took the lead on the cheese platters.
She didn’t say it, but it was clear she felt passed over.
I wondered about this as I rolled silverware in cloth napkins. Maybe Ron had worked here before, then taken a leave of absence, and only recently returned? Or, maybe he had a ton of experience working in similar places? Who could say why some people get advanced while others don’t?
Our wiry manager walked up and interrupted my reverie, “I’m gonna team you up with Ron today, he can teach you a lot.” Then he walked away, clearly intending for me to follow.
I chased after him, but threw a glance over my shoulder at the waitress. She shook her head side to side disapprovingly, but then waved me on encouragingly as if to say, “It’s not your fault, go.”
Catching up, I was led towards an un-extraordinary-looking man with shaggy blond hair and a three-day stubble stache.
“Bill, this is Ron. You’ll be with him today.”
Ron greeted me with a genuine smile, and we shook hands. As we shook, I noted that his handshake was confident without being overbearing; it was a good handshake.
The manager sped off, and Ron and I got straight to work setting up folding tables. We’d only done a couple when the manager returned and asked Ron if he knew where all the linens were kept.
Ron nodded his head and said, “Yeah, boss, what do you need?”
The manager told Ron that after we had these tables all set, the tables in Room 2 needed to be dressed.
Ron nodded his head in understanding, “We’re on it, boss.”
Ron and I continued setting up tables until the manager was out of sight; then Ron walked over to one of the waitresses whom I knew had been working at the Center for several years and said, “We’ve been told to dress all the tables in Room 2.”
He didn’t ask her any questions; he just stated aloud the task we’d be assigned.
In response, the waitress dropped what she was doing, led us to the linen closet, and explained everything we needed to know to get the job done. I was dumbfounded. Ron had acted like he knew exactly what was expected of us when he’d actually had no clue. He continued this routine throughout the night as various tasks or assignments came our way. No matter what it was, Ron always acted as if he knew what he was doing, and because of his confidence, everyone believed he did.
I was fascinated by this behavior and watched everything closely. But finally, after yet another of these incidents, I blurted out, “Ron, what’s your secret? You’ve only been here three days, and you’re practically running the place?!”
Ron looked surprised, then with an easy smile, he said, “I used to be in the military, and it’s important to always say yes, even if you don’t know what it is exactly that you have to do. As long as you understand the gist of what is being asked, you can always find someone who can show you how to do it. All the boss cares about is that you get it done, so say yes, then do whatever it takes to get it done.”
He’d said it in his own way, but Ron was applying the “fake it until you make it” principle. And after watching Ron for those few hours, I finally understood what that expression really meant.
Technically, Ron never claimed to be anything he wasn’t; he just stepped up and took responsibility for things. As long as he thought he could handle whatever request was being made, he said yes. And by doing so, Ron made our manager’s job easier.
In response, the manager continued to give him more responsibility.
And because of that willingness to say yes, Ron had bypassed people who were more experienced and arguably more deserving of promotion.
This blew my mind because I’d always thought leadership was granted because of your actual abilities in a given area, but maybe that’s backwards.
By saying yes to everything, Ron exposed himself to more opportunities to learn. And while the rest of us waited to be ready before stepping up, Ron stepped up and figured out the readiness part later.
That mindset, more than skill, had accelerated his growth.
* * *
I thought about it all night, and as I rode my bicycle home, I decided that from now on, as long as I was certain I could figure something out or find the answer, I would say yes and figure out the how part later.
Chapter 8: What Am I Doing
Months passed without a single day off. And before I knew it, the holiday season was upon us again.
Mervyn’s asked me to come on full-time to help handle the rush. The California Center for the Arts had extra shows that needed technical help. The banquet center was booked solid with holiday events. And people were so tired from the season’s chaos, the pizza orders never stopped.
I said yes to as many of the requests as I physically could, maniacally bicycling from one side of town to the other as I raced from job to job trying to meet the needs of all my employers.
I killed myself all winter to keep up.
And now, finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for.
I tear open my December statement from Bank of America.
Statement period, December 1996
Total Deposits for the month $1621.98
Current Balance $43.22
Disappointment hit me like a blow.
This was supposed to be my best month ever, and technically, it was. $1621.98 was the most I’d ever earned in one month. But to maintain the non-stop schedule, I was spending my earnings as fast as they came in. I didn’t have time to meal prep, so I was eating out nearly every meal. Then, I splurged on some cassette tapes to try and make the commutes across town more bearable, plus a million other little expenses that I couldn’t remember because they were too insignificant.
But once all those expenses were added up and subtracted from the total, I was left with just $43.22.
It didn’t make sense.
I was doing everything I was supposed to do. Work hard, don’t call in sick, go above and beyond, and you’ll be successful! Isn’t that the promise?
I did all that, and I still hadn’t saved enough to fix my truck.
It felt like I was pouring money into a bucket that’d had its bottom sawn off.
I looked down at the bank statement with its neat little summary of my spending and earnings and thought, “I should do a summary like that for the rest of my life, with everything calculated, on one page, just to see where I’m at.”
Grabbing one of my ever-present drawing pads and a pen, I mapped it out:
Bicycle Mileage Chart:
My house to the pizza place: 3.3 miles east
My house to the retail store: 1 mile west
My house to the theater: .5 miles north
Work Schedule:
4-5 days per week, retail store
4-5 days per week, pizza place
0-2 days per week, theater
0-4 days per week, banquet server
My most frequent double was Mervyn’s to Little Caesars. I'd ride 1 mile to Mervyn’s for the morning shift, then home to change, before riding 3.3 miles in the other direction to get to Little Caesars, and then ride back home again. That was 8.6 miles on my one-speed BMX bike in addition to my two, six-hour shifts.
Doing that five days a week added up to nearly 45 miles a week; multiply 45 miles by 52 weeks, and that equals 2,236 miles a year.
By keeping that schedule for a full year, I’d ridden over 2,000 miles just to make a measly $5.15 and $6.50 an hour!
I’d always been thin, but this cycling regimen had dropped my 6'5" frame down to 165 pounds. I looked sickly.
Not knowing what else I could do, I decided to set a goal for myself: Make enough money to fix the truck before January 1 the following year, or I have to sell it.
This plan condemned me to another year of this insane work-and-cycling schedule, but getting the vehicle fixed and expanding my range seemed like the only way to get ahead.
Just one more year, I told myself, keep going, you can win the game of life. You just have to refuse to let anything break you or slow you down.
Chapter 9: The Wall
The last year slipped past so quickly that I barely noticed it was gone — along with my twentieth birthday, which was forgotten, even by me. I was working a double that day, and it wasn’t until close to six in the evening that the thought surfaced. Hey, it’s December 15th, my birthday. That realization lingered, because it was the first time I had ever forgotten it. Every birthday before had been something to celebrate, another milestone in the journey towards adulthood, but with how hard I was working, it no longer seemed to matter. What mattered was getting up and keeping on.
Now it’s January 1997, and I know the routine:
Work my morning shift at the retail store, clock out, and ride my bicycle home for “lunch.” At least, that was the intention. In practice, those breaks became naps. I took every second of sleep I could steal, and when the alarms went off, I’d spring up, pull on my still-dirty Little Caesars uniform, and race across town on my bike. Once there, I’d clock in and immediately make myself a medium pizza. I’d coat the raw dough with calorie-rich garlic butter and stack it an inch thick with toppings. When it came out of the oven, I’d head to the back of the store, sit on the big bags of flour we used to make dough, crack open a two-liter of Mountain Dew, eat the entire pizza, and start my shift. By the end of the night, the Mountain Dew would be gone, its caffeine and sugar fueling the madness. The store closed at 10:00 pm, but since I was managing, I rarely left before 10:45 or 11:00 pm. Then I’d hop on my bicycle and ride home. Hot or cold, rain or shine, it didn’t matter. If I needed to be somewhere, I rode.
Then I’d be up again at 5:00 am the next morning to repeat the process.
I believed I had infinite reserves, that I’d always be able to dig deeper, but you can only borrow against tomorrow for so long before the loan comes due.
One day, as I was making this normal transition between the morning and evening jobs, I set two alarms to make sure I’d wake up on time from my nap. But when I did wake, it was dark outside. I’d overslept, somehow sleeping through both alarms. Grabbing my phone, I saw three missed calls from the pizza place. I didn’t even listen to them; I knew what they’d say. Instead, I called the store.
A tired-sounding voice answered, “Little Caesars Valley Parkway, pickup or delivery?”
“Hey José, it’s me, I’m so sorry.”
“We got slammed tonight, and no one else was available, so I had to cover for you. I had plans tonight, but I had to cancel.”
“I’m really sorry. Do you want me to still come in? I could help with closing?”
“Doesn’t matter, the rush is over.”
I was about to say more, but the line clicked. He hung up on me.
The store would be closed in another ninety minutes, and I knew my presence wouldn’t really make any difference now. But I threw on my uniform anyway and ran down the stairs to my bike. Then, riding as fast as I could, I crossed town to the store. When I walked in, I weathered José’s angry glare, punched the clock, tied on an apron, and headed straight back to the dish area.
What I found there made my eyes bulge: a literal mountain of pans and trays, stacked taller than me.
In preparation for this monumental task, I pulled the stoppers on all three sinks to drain them and start fresh.
Big mistake!
The grease trap, which had been temperamental for months, belched a foul mixture of oily slurry and clumps of half-rotten food from beneath its steel lid. I tried breathing through my mouth to ease the gagging, but that only made it worse as the spoiled corn oil stench coated my throat. The yellow ooze with rainbow film spread across the floor like the Blob. And every few seconds, another wet glurp pushed more foulness up from below, as if satan himself were in there, clawing to get out.
With everyone already pissed at me for being late, I knew I was on my own. So I prepped a mop bucket with copious amounts of bleach and Simple Green, then swabbed up as much as I could.
I filled the sinks with hot water and soap. Then I scrubbed like a medieval skullery boy. The pans had hard, baked-on crud, and nothing came easy.
After two hours, I was soaked from head to toe with sweat, grease, and dishwater.
I’d made a sizeable dent, but was far from finished.
Grabbing a steel putty knife that was kept for this very purpose, I scraped it from heel to toe along the bottom of my shoe, dislodging an insole-shaped layer of gunk from its bottom, a task I repeated on the other foot.
Then I bent over and rested one elbow on the sink for support, while the other hand aimed a stream of hot, steamy water over the soaped-up pans. I forced myself to keep going. But for the first time, I admitted that I couldn’t keep this up; I’ve never hit the wall like this before; I’d always had enough in the tank to keep going before.
But this… It’s a wake-up call…
I washed dish after dish and pan after pan, and at some point, started repeating that old saying in my head: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, all the while expecting a different result.”
I need to do something different, but what?
I didn’t know…
But I have to figure it out, and soon…
Chapter 10: A Way Out
A few days later, I parked my bicycle in the break room at Little Caesars. Then I started my medium pizza, two-liter of Mountain Dew, sit on the flour sacks, and eat routine.
I was run down and essentially useless until the caffeine and calories kicked in. Luckily, the big boss turned a blind eye to my slow starts because he knew I’d skip my fifteen-minute breaks later in the shift.
As I sat there, the morning manager stopped by to chat before clocking out.
“Billy Boy, Billy Biilly Bo Billy, I’m ready to split on out of here. You got this?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I think we can handle it.”
“Alright, alright,” he said. “Oh, have you met the new delivery driver yet? He can juggle just like you, and he’s real good too.”
“No, I haven’t. What do you mean real good?”
“Speak o’ the devil,” my manager said, looking towards the front door of the store.
A young man wearing an ill-fitting Little Caesars delivery driver shirt and cap walked towards us.
My manager said, “Yo, Dustin, you gotta bust out some of those juggle juggle moves, I want you to show Billy Boy here.”
“You want a show?” Dustin responded, turning his cap backward as a show of getting into character. Then he made his way to the walk-in cooler, where the pizza dough was stored. Opening its door, he reached inside and grabbed a large, twenty-ounce dough ball. Then he took it to the sheet-out table, where the dough balls were flattened for pizza making. He picked up a wheel cutter and sliced it into five equal-sized pieces. As he worked, I got the distinct impression that though he was new, he’d already been asked to do this a few times. He then dipped the five pieces of dough into a bath of bleached flour to neutralize their oily stickiness. He then formed the five lumps into spheres and began to juggle. All five dough balls rose into the air, one following another, deftly dancing around one another in a gravity-defying display. It was amazing, and I knew how difficult it was, so I expected him to drop or for the balls to collide with each other and blow out, but they didn’t; he was solid.
“Whoo whee, we got ourselves a circus right here at Little Caesars; it’s a Caesars circus up in here,” my manager whooped.
In response, Dustin started throwing tricks — one hand sent the balls higher and over the top of the others, changing the pattern. I’d never seen anyone change the pattern with five before. It looked effortless, like magic, but better than magic because it was real.
“OK, Dustin,” my manager interrupted, “wrap it up, you’ve got a delivery.”
Dustin stopped the pattern, easily collecting the five dough balls into his hands.
We all clapped, and Dustin made a show of taking a bow, placing one hand behind his back and the other in front of him as he did so.
Then he turned his Little Caesar’s hat back to face forward, loaded two pizzas into a red delivery bag, and headed towards the door. As he walked away, I noticed that when he’d put his hand behind his back to bow at the end of his show, it had left a little white splotch of pizza flour on the back of his shirt.
Then he was gone.
My manager looked at me and said, “I told you he was good.”
“Yeah, he is,” I responded.
“I guess you’re not the best juggler on staff anymore.” He said, laughing as he walked away.
Yeah, I guess not, I thought to myself.
Back when I’d first come on at Little Caesar’s, I’d casually mentioned that I could juggle and had been asked to do a similar demonstration as Dustin had. I’d juggled two of the wheel-style pizza cutters and a less-than-terror-inducing old butcher knife they kept in the kitchen for cutting blocks of cheese. Everyone had been suitably impressed, and I’d been known as the house juggler ever since. But I’d never learned to juggle more than three. And Dustin was only the second person I’d ever seen who could do five.
I felt myself fading from the present, traveling back to fifth grade, drawn into one of my movie memories.
* * *
It was a Monday morning, and I was sitting at my desk when a student volunteer dropped a colorful catalog in front of me. Curious, I picked it up. Inside were pictures of brightly colored juggling balls, juggling pins, spinning rings, plates, and, near the back, a shiny chrome unicycle. And stapled to the back of the catalog was a mail-order form.
I thought to myself, Wait, you can just order this kinda stuff and learn how to do it?
As if hearing my thoughts, our teacher spoke.
“Boys and girls, this week we’re going to have a special guest. His name is Jonathan, and he’s a circus performer. You’ll see him outside during recess and at lunch, where he’ll be teaching juggling and other circus skills to anyone who wants to learn. Then on Friday, he’s going to do a performance for us in the cafeteria. If you want to order anything from the catalog, have your parents fill out the form you just received and bring it back by Wednesday. Then your juggling equipment will be delivered on Friday.”
The prospect of learning to juggle caught my attention in a way I recognized. I had always been fascinated by things that moved: airplanes blazing trails across the sky, RC cars zipping around, hackey sack, chain reactions of dominoes, marble runs, Rube Goldberg machines, and, of course, soccer, which I played compulsively. Anything to do with motion and timing spoke directly to my soul, and I’d happily lose myself in any of them whenever I could. My mom had noticed this early, even noting it in my baby book:
“He can lie in his crib for long stretches, completely absorbed by the spinning, wind-up mobile above his head.”
Movement soothed me then, and it soothes me now. And juggling felt like an ultimate act of immersion, a way to become one with this movement I loved. I suddenly felt like I was exploding, and I knew I had to try!
The moment the recess bell rang, I leaped out of my seat, but instead of running to the soccer field like I usually would, I ran to look for the juggler.
Spying a guy in colorful patchwork pants with long wavy hair and a scruffy brown beard, I knew I’d found him.
Jonathan was talking to the sixth-grade teacher, who was shakily maintaining a juggling pattern. Jonathan smiled and pointed, clearly giving tips. Then, when the teacher dropped, Jonathan took the props to demonstrate, quickly gliding into different moves and trick variations.
I wanted so badly to step forward, but I froze. My shyness took hold, and my body locked up with a paralyzing fear that I wouldn’t know what to say, or worse, that everyone would turn and stare at me. So, despite my excitement, I watched from a distance, too shy to approach.
At lunch, I tried again, but by the time I’d found Jonathan, he was already surrounded by kids. I hovered nearby, pretending to tie my shoe, hoping to be invited in, but no one noticed me. And I couldn’t force myself to step into the circle. I hated being shy; it felt like a defect that kept me from doing things I wanted to do. And I knew I missed out on countless opportunities because of it — opportunities like this — but I just couldn’t push myself past it.
The rest of the week was equally frustrating: I’d run out at every break, desperate to learn, only to find myself held back by the same paralyzing fear. And because I stayed so far back, no one realized I wanted to try. So I just watched, picking up what I could.
When Friday arrived, we went to the cafeteria for the performance. Jonathan cracked jokes, did tricks, danced around the stage, and made us all laugh. His energy was magnetic, and I was enthralled by the many colorful objects as they whirled through space and time.
Then came the finale.
He picked up five colorful balls.
Five? I thought, That can’t be possible!
He shuffled his feet nervously, wound up, and threw them all straight up at once! Then, screaming at the top of his lungs, he ran off stage. The balls crashed to the ground, and we all laughed, because of course, he’s not going to juggle five!
But then he came back, calm and confident. He collected the balls and did it for real, juggling all five. It was beautiful; smooth, controlled, precise. We all clapped excitedly. And in that moment, I knew something more surely than I’d even known anything before.
When I grow up, I want to be a professional juggler.
* * *
The memory came and went in an instant, so fast that when I returned to the present, I could still see Dustin through the store’s front windows, loading the big red pizza delivery bag into the back of his car.
Then he drove away.
I stood frozen beside the 400° pizza oven, in my body, but my mind far away. I’d forgotten that I’d ever dreamed of being a juggler; forgotten the weeks I’d spent teaching myself, forgotten the countless hours spent in the backyard practicing. And how I’d loved every second of it, the feeling of working through the movements, the rhythmic slap of the objects hitting my hands, and the feeling of the patterns as they etched themselves into the folds of my brain.
But, much as I’d enjoyed it, I also knew it was a silly dream; no one can actually make a living juggling, right?
Just moments before, I’d been exhausted, completely beaten down by the endless grind. But now energy coursed through me. My senses sharpened, colors became brighter, sounds sharper, and I could even smell the woody scent of the folded pizza boxes beside me.
My brain began to spin a meteor storm of thoughts and possibilities.
Could this be what I’ve been waiting for?
Is this what I’m here to do?
* * *
Later in the night, there was a break in the delivery schedule, and I had a chance to learn more of Dustin’s story. He said he was in college and performing regularly, doing local gigs and earning money as a juggler, magician, and fire-eater.
“You can eat fire, too?!” I exclaimed in amazement.
“Yeah, blasts too!”
“What’s a blast?” I asked.
“It’s where you take fuel in your mouth and spit it at the flame so it makes a giant fireball.”
Wow, that’s crazy. I thought. And he talked about it so nonchalantly, like it was no big deal. I was amazed.
I kept asking all kinds of questions about juggling, like how much he practiced and whether he had any tips for juggling four balls.
He was very patient and gave me some pointers.
* * *
The next morning, I showed up at Little Caesars over an hour early and started work right away, quickly dumping big bags of flour into our giant electric mixer, adding the yeast and water, and running it until I had a huge ball of pizza dough. Pulling the whole from the mixer, I quickly cut and weighed pieces to size, sixteen ounces for medium, twenty ounces for large. Once cut, each piece was kneaded, rolled into balls, and placed on an oiled tray. These would proof overnight to become the dough balls for tomorrow’s pizzas.
Some guys were super fast at this, but I never was. Mostly because I hated making dough — it was boring and repetitive — so I’d procrastinate. And on most days, I’d barely finish before the afternoon shift came in.
But today would be different.
By noon, with my early start, I was sliding the last tray of dough into its rack.
This left me with sixty minutes of uninterrupted practice time before the afternoon crew arrived.
Grabbing a cold ball of dough, I cut it into four pieces.
Despite the time I’d spent practicing as a kid, I’d never learned to do four balls, and I was determined to put Dustin’s tips to work.
He’d said, “Four is just two in the right hand, and two in the left hand, done at the same time.”
That tip alone was a huge help because when you juggle three balls, they switch hands. Right-hand throws go to the left, left-hand throws to the right. But with four balls, the right hand throws to itself, and the left to itself, which was a completely different pattern.
I gave it a try, but it’s a disaster; all the dough balls crashed into each other.
After fifteen minutes of practice, I’d gotten a few short runs. But the pattern would grow narrower and narrower until it collapsed in on itself. It was frustrating, but I kept at it, and soon enough, something clicked. Multiple times, the balls found their groove, and it would go, go, go.
With only an hour’s practice, I could now juggle four balls.
Buoyed by this progress and still wanting to practice more, I handed things over to the afternoon shift manager, then rode my bike to a nearby sporting goods store to buy five crocheted hacky-sack footbags.
I’d been a big fan of hackey sack in high school, and often played for an hour or more per day. So I’d gotten pretty good at it. My thinking in buying hacky sacks to practice juggling was that I’d not only get juggling balls, but also have five new hacky sacks. So whether I ultimately ended up catching them in my hands or kicking them off my feet, I’d have plenty of uses for them.
Or at least that’s how I convinced myself to spend $100 I didn’t have on five hacky sacks. ($20 a pop, yeouch!)
Once I got home, I started working on five.
When you add more items, the throws need to be higher. Making higher throws gives you more time to get the objects into play. But this created a problem; I’m 6'5", and whenever I threw five in my low-ceilinged bedroom, they’d bounce off the ceiling. I needed a way to solve this, so I placed a pillow on the floor in the corner of my room. Then, kneeling on the pillow, I tucked a second pillow under my butt, then sat back on my heels. A few test throws confirmed this position gave me enough ceiling height, and I resumed practicing. From 5 pm to 2 am, I sat and threw those five bags into the air, and every time, it was chaos. They hit the wall; they hit each other. My throw heights were uneven, with some too high and others too low. And when the throws did go out halfway decently, the hackey sacks still popped out of my hands, or I’d miss the catch entirely.
I knew I had a knack for this, but five was really hard. As much as I wanted it, I knew it wasn’t going to happen in one day, no matter how much I practiced. Calling it a night, I began to unfold from the kneeling position. My body protested, sending pins and needles to show its anger over having been twisted into a pretzel shape for so many hours. I went slowly, letting my circulation return, until I could regain my feet. Reaching down, I picked up the black pillowcase-encapsulated pillow I’d been kneeling on. As I did, I saw two long, pill-shaped sweat stains where my knees had been. I guess I’d never realized how sweaty knees could be before. The pillow I’d placed behind my knees was in a similar state, though its sweat pattern defied description, amoeba-shaped maybe. I threw both of them in the dryer and went to sleep without pillows.
After that, every night when I got home from work, I’d find that corner and plop down to practice five-ball juggling for two hours; that was the rule. No matter how tired I was, no matter how early I had to wake up the next day, I made practice my priority.
It took thirteen more days of that before I experienced my first real runs with five balls. And on the fourteenth day, I got twenty-two catches.
The progress felt amazing, but I wanted more.
I was ready for more.
* * *
For the next few weeks, whenever our shifts aligned, Dustin and I would talk about juggling and performing, and we eventually became friends.
One day, after I’d told him about my progress with five, he even invited me to his house. Once there, he juggled, showed me some magic tricks, and even ate fire, which was so cool. I was blown away by it all; here was a guy who wasn’t that different from me; we were both working at the same pizza place, both just starting to figure out life, but he was somehow making money from juggling. So, I asked how, and he explained that he’d landed an agent who sent him out to do events. He said he’d started out by twisting balloons, another skill I’d had no exposure to.
I wanted to learn it all, and kept asking questions. But when I started asking about agents and getting work, his answers got really vague.
I guess it makes sense not to want to help a potential competitor when you’re trying to make opportunities for yourself. But he was so much better than me, I couldn’t imagine he’d feel threatened.
So I asked if he would ever consider teaming up, but that only exasperated the situation. I imagine he felt that he had lots to give and only things to lose by working with me.
And who could blame him? What did I have to offer? I could only juggle a little. And other than the five hacky sacks I’d bought, I didn’t even have gear. All the props I’d ordered back in elementary school had long since been lost or broken. So if I was going to get better, I needed to get some props.
I asked Dustin where he got his equipment, but he wouldn’t tell me. It took another month of my asking before he finally acquiesced and gave me a beat-up old catalog. It was for a company out of New York, which I had never heard of, called Dubé. Flipping its creased pages, I saw photo after photo of amazing, colorful props, clubs, balls, rings, scarves, cigar boxes, and more.
I thanked him for the gift, but he shrugged and said, “That’s pretty old; the prices might be outdated.”
But I wasn’t worried about that; to me, it was a holy item, a tiny lifeline to this world of object manipulation. A world I knew little about, but one I deeply wanted to become a part of.
Chapter 11: When Are You Gonna Get Serious?
As soon as I got home from Dustin’s, I pored over the catalog.
I loved everything!
I wanted one of everything!
But I had to limit myself because I was so broke. And after some painful concessions, I’d narrowed it down to the absolute essentials.
Totaling the items, I wrote out a check and mailed it off to Dubé
The next few weeks passed so slowly, and then a big box finally arrived. I ripped it open and found my beautiful props inside. I juggled the clubs first, which felt great. I’d had a set of American single-piece injection-molded clubs as a kid, and they’d been great to learn with. But these new ones were completely different. They had a sleek Euro design, a hard body that slipped over a wooden dowel, and a soft-wrapped handle with rubber knobs at each end. Thinking ahead, I’d ordered four of them, since you can’t learn to juggle four clubs if you don’t have four clubs.
I decided right then that four clubs would be my next big challenge.
My mom watched all this with bemusement; it wasn’t the first time I’d become obsessed with something. She’d humored my ten-year soccer phase, even letting me play on three different teams at once for a year. She’d seen me through a skateboarding phase, the hacky sack phase, a flatland freestyle bicycling phase, even the starting my own businesses phase when I was ten years old; she’d supported me through it all.
Then, a few weeks later, another box of props arrived, and still, she didn’t say anything.
Then a unicycle appeared, and again she said nothing.
Then I bought a six-foot-tall giraffe unicycle.
Which admittedly was a stretch, since I couldn’t even ride a regular unicycle yet. But it looked so cool, I couldn’t resist!
Then, one day, she walked in, and I was standing behind the sofa, watching an episode of Saved By The Bell on TV, while balancing on a rolla-bola board — a plastic cylinder with a board on top that I’d just made because I could make it more cheaply than buying one out of the catalog.
She burst out, “Why are you buying all this juggling stuff?!
“I didn’t buy this, I made it!” I shot back.
“You need to get serious and start working on yourself! Or go to college! Or get your truck fixed! How much have you spent on all this anyway?”
“Over $2,000,” I admitted, “but it’s gonna be ok, all I have to…”
She cut me off, “$2,000!! With what you’ve spent on all this juggling crap, you could have fixed your truck! How are you affording this?”
“Well, I was actually thinking of selling the truck.”
“Sell the truck?! WHY!?”
“To help pay for all the juggling stuff.”
She rarely got angry, but this threw her over the edge. “You know, maybe it’s time you started paying some rent. If you have all this extra money to spare, you might as well be helping me make ends meet.” Then she disappeared into the kitchen to make herself something to eat.
I wanted to explain; I wanted to tell her: This is me taking things seriously, that this is me trying to make something of myself. But she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see what I could see, so I let it go. And who could blame her? What parent wants to hear their child say:
“I want to be a professional juggler.”
I couldn’t expect it to make sense to anyone else, but it made sense to me.
I called the local newspaper and placed an ad in the classifieds for my truck.
Two weeks later, a gentleman came by and handed me $1,300 in cash.
The tow truck he’d brought with him winched my little Dodge Ram fifty out of its spot in the carport, then tied it down and hauled it away.
I looked down at the $1,300 with dreamy eyes. When you’re starting a business, cash isn’t for spending, it’s for building. And I now had 1,300 “get stuff done slips.”
I’ll need a costume soon, I thought, and eventually, a prop table.
Chapter 12: Roger the Juggler
A part of me kept hoping Dustin would change his mind about teaming up, but I really didn’t think it would happen. And I knew I needed to find other jugglers.
There was a rumor of a juggler named Roger who street-performed on Carlsbad Beach, so I decided to try to track him down.
There wasn’t any real plan, just a vague hope that I’d spot him practicing in a park or catch sight of the VW Bus I’ve heard he lived in.
So whenever I could, I’d borrow my mom’s car, drive up and down the coast, weaving through side streets, looking for some guy tossing clubs in the air. But these searches turned up nothing; he was a ghost.
I kept trying, but the weeks went by without any luck. And with no way to look him up or track him down, I gave up.
Two weeks later, on a rare evening off from work, I asked my high school sweetheart to the beach to watch a sunset.
We’d met during my junior year of high school. I’d been sitting in my last class of the day, drama, daydreaming about something. But then, I saw her walk past the long line of windows with her waist-length, flat-ironed blonde hair blowing behind her in the wind. She stopped at the door to talk to another student, and my heart hammered against my ribs. She was average in height, thin, with a fast, friendly smile and sparkling blue eyes—a total California girl, but with a gentleness that made her feel approachable.
Up till then, my every attempt at romance had ended in awkward silences or the dreaded “you’re like a brother” speech. But that day, I somehow overcame my introversion and, despite not knowing what to say, walked over and said “Hello.” That was it. No smooth lines, just a greeting.
The next day at lunch, she found me while I was playing hackey sack with friends and asked to borrow a dollar. I gave it to her, assuming I’d never see it (or her) again. But the next day, she tracked me down and paid me back. It wasn't until months later that she confessed she’d given me back the exact same dollar bill—she had just used it as an excuse to talk to me. That “loan” was, as far as I could tell, the best value any young man has ever gotten for a dollar. She was wonderfully supportive of everything I was doing and seemed to understand that the time I spent working and practicing was necessary to finding my place in the world. It made moments like this, our rare times together, extra special.
As the sun hovered over the horizon, we settled in on the concrete seawall. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I remember thinking nothing could make this moment any more perfect, but then out of nowhere, there he was: the ghost I’d been chasing, unloading gear and setting up to do a juggling show right in front of us.
Finally!
I felt the familiar, restless pull, and I squeezed her hand, a silent apology for interrupting our date, and stood up.
She gave me a supportive smile that said, “Go ahead,” so I walked up to introduce myself as a fellow juggler.
Roger looked me over, sizing me up, “Can you pass clubs?” he asks.
“A little,” I say. “My friend Dustin and I have done it a few times.”
“Can you juggle torches?”
“Oh no, I’ve never done that.”
“But you juggle clubs, right?”
“I do.”
“Alright, then you can juggle torches.”
Without another word, he turns to the dozen people sitting on the concrete seawall and shouts, “This guy’s a juggler! So we’re gonna do something special.”
He reaches into his case and lifts a set of well-used juggling torches into the air.
“We’re gonna light these on fire, then pass them between us.”
We’re gonna do what?! Terror grips me, and my stomach jumps into my throat. The voice inside my head starts screaming, Wait, I’ve never performed before, no, I can’t, I’m way too scared! But it’s too late, the crowd is already leaning in, intrigued.
He launches into a bit about needing a lighter. Someone holds one up, so he takes it, puts it in his pocket, and immediately asks for another one. When someone else offers one, he takes it too, and then, with a grin, he pulls the first one back out, getting an easy laugh from the crowd.
He flicks the lighter, and the torches roar to life.
He tosses me one. I catch it. Two more, and it’s go time.
He yells the universal signal for we’re starting, “Hup!”
We start.
From the moment I make the first throw, I feel the difference. And I don’t just mean the heat; the flames create drag as they spin, shifting the weight of the torches, so every throw feels unpredictable.
I know I should be terrified of the fire. But I’m so much more afraid of messing up in front of all these people. And the fire, intense as it is, pales in comparison to the pressure of the audience’s eyes on me.
Then, as soon as I think I might be getting the hang of it, I drop one.
Doh.
I scramble to pick it up, and we start again. The crowd cheers, impressed despite the mistake.
Roger yells, “Hup,” again, and we stop.
And just like that, I’ve performed in front of an audience for the first time.
Roger started into his next routine, so I returned to my girlfriend on the seawall, my heart still pounding with adrenaline. As I approached, she gave me one of her winning smiles, then whispered, “You were so good.”
She always knew what I needed to hear.
Roger continued his show, doing all kinds of cool tricks, but his finale is the best: he balances on a giant green walking globe while juggling torches.
After he takes his bow, I go up and drop five bucks into his hat, “Great show,” I tell him. Then, hoping this might lead somewhere, I add, “Would you want to get together and practice sometime?”
He smiles appreciatively but shakes his head. “These days, the show itself is my practice.”
Then a woman walks up, and he shifts gears instantly, flashing a grin and flirting with her. Within minutes, they plan to meet at a bar after he packs up.
I don’t want to give up just yet, so I throw out one more offer. “Well, what if we did a show together sometime? I could help you juggle fire.”
Roger pauses, then picks up his black top hat and holds it out so I can see inside.
I guess that there’s maybe forty bucks in there, or maybe less.
“There’s not enough money in there for me,” he says. “So there’s definitely not enough for both of us.”
I nod. I get it. “Thanks anyway,” I say, then turn and walk away.
Once again, I felt like I wasn’t even in the running, and I knew I’d have to find another way.
I believed I had potential, but you can’t get by on just potential.
Chapter 13: Meeting a Master
I’d learned a lot from watching Roger’s show. And I now knew that a street show, performed at sundown by the coast, could earn me about $40 in tips.
Mervyn’s was only paying me $6.50 an hour, so it’d take six hours to make the same $40.
A street show could be a start, but that alone fell far short of what I’d need to make this a career. If I were to have any hope of performing professionally, I needed to expand my skills, and adding fire torches to the repertoire seemed like a great way to do just that!
Flipping through the same juggling catalog Dustin had given me, I picked out the juggling torches I wanted, and then noticed on the same page a product I’d never heard of before: Fireballs.
From my earliest juggling explorations, I’d always been partial to ball juggling, so the idea of juggling flaming balls was too good to pass up. I impulsively added a set of three to my order sheet.
Then I wrote a check, sealed my order and payment in an envelope, and sent it off.
When the box arrived, I immediately went out front of my apartment to try the Fireballs. They were essentially spiral balls of wire, dipped in silicone to dissipate heat. Each ball had metal caps at both ends, where the wicks were attached to its hollow interior. Each cap had a small hole through which fuel could be injected to saturate the wicking material tucked inside.
Lighting them up, I juggled them for the first time. My first thought was that they weren’t very nice in the hand; their size and feel made advanced trickery challenging. And though the silicone wrapping helped dissipate the heat, they didn’t stay cool for long. Anything more than thirty seconds, and your hands begin to burn.
Hmm, not the most practical prop, I decided, but still, I’m glad I understand how they work. I blow them out and refuel for a second burn. As I do this, I hear a man’s voice from the second-story window of the apartment next to the one I live in, “Is that hard to do?”
I looked up but couldn’t see anyone through the window screen, so I asked, “Do you know how to juggle?”
“Yes,” he shouted.
“Well, if you can already juggle, it’s essentially the same. You just have to keep them moving so you don’t burn your hands. Do you want to try?”
“I do,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”
I continued my refueling exercise. A few moments later, I heard the sound of his apartment door.
Then, a Hispanic-looking man with short dark hair approached. He wore a plain black t-shirt, loose-fitting black cotton pants, and slipper-like black shoes that looked to be made of felt. I guessed he was in his mid-thirties, and he spoke with no accent.
“Do you want to try with some regular beanbags first to warm up?” I asked.
“No, I want to juggle those,” he said, pointing at the Fireballs.
With anyone else, I might have insisted he try the beanbags first, if only to see that he was, in fact, a competent juggler. But there was something in his manner, a confidence in his stride, so I didn’t argue.
He reached out for the Fireballs, and I placed them in his hands. Then I lit them, and he started juggling, quite competently, in fact.
“Have you juggled fire before?” I asked while he was still juggling.
“No, never!” he laughed.
“Well, that’s pretty good.” As I said this, he dropped; I’d broken his concentration by talking to him. But I quickly grabbed the drop and handed it back so he could continue.
“Man, they’re starting to get hot!” He said.
“Yeah, stop anytime you want to, or just drop them, and we’ll extinguish them.”
“Ok, here, I’ll throw you one,” he said, throwing me one simultaneously.
I caught it and, with a big blast of breath, extinguished the flame.
He copied me and blew out the other two before handing them back.
“Thank you,” he said, “that was exhilarating.”
“Of course,” I said. Then asked, “Did you just move in? I thought that apartment was empty?”
“No, we’ve been here for four years now.”
“Really? We’ve been here for a while, too, but I’ve never seen you.”
“Well, we keep to ourselves mostly. So why are you out here juggling? I see you almost every day with your unicycle and stuff.”
“I want to be a professional. Perform, do gigs. Or, at least, that’s the dream.” As I said this, I absentmindedly, and with a wince, reseated my right shoulder into its socket.
Noticing this, he asked, “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s stupid, really. I tried to slam-dunk a basketball one time in high school, and it’s been a little fussy ever since.”
“Ah, well, since you let me juggle, let me do something for your shoulder. It’ll help it heal. Come with me.” Then he turned and walked towards his house. His tone was one of authority; he wasn’t asking me, yet there was no threat in his tone, and I felt completely safe. So I followed him up the walkway and into his home.
There were no lights on inside, and the interior was dim, illuminated only by the trickles of light that had wormed their way through the holes and creases of the window’s horizontal blinds. There was a distinct herbal medicine smell, like a cross between Vicks VapoRub and an Asian restaurant. Not unpleasant, just crisp. Looking into the living room, I was surprised there was no furniture, not even a table; the floor was completely clear. But there were dozens of black-and-white, eight-by-ten photographs ringing the living room. I walked over and looked at the first photograph, and was surprised to see an old Asian man standing next to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then I went to the next photo, and the same old Asian man was next to Jean-Claude Van Damme, then Chuck Norris, then Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone, and on and on. Every action hero you could think of was on the wall. My host said nothing as I did this; he just watched.
I’ve never been one to get star-struck; I can appreciate people’s work without being a fool about it, but this was admittedly pretty incredible. Then my new friend spoke over my shoulder, “Do you notice that they are all standing behind him in every photo?”
I hadn’t noticed before, but I did now that he pointed it out. “Why is that?”
“It’s a sign of respect,” he answered. “In Chinese tradition, you stand behind whoever is the most respected and revered of the group.”
“Why is he with all these people?”
“Because he is Shifu; he is their teacher.”
“Teacher of what?” I asked.
“Many things.”
“Is he your teacher?”
“He is.”
“What did he teach you?”
My new friend looked at me, or maybe it was through me, like he could see something more than eyes alone are intended to see.
“I want to show you something,” he said, then walked up the stairs to the second floor. I followed, sensing it was what he’d intended.
He opened the door to one of the bedrooms, and I followed. As I passed the threshold, I was stunned by the simplicity and complexity, and how those contradictory descriptions seamlessly combined in this one space. To the right was a small, simple bed. No frame, no blanket, just a sheet over a narrow mattress. A small nightstand was beside the bed, with one or two personal items on top. Under the window was a low-slung table draped with a decorative cloth. On this table were two black-and-white eight-by-ten photos of my new friend. In both, he wore a black Gi and practiced martial arts. Next to this table on the floor was a simple cloth sack nestled inside a short wooden box. Then, my eyes began to scan the walls. Hanging on simple nails was every martial weapon imaginable. Swords, sai, a bo staff, nunchucks, a chain with a heavy metal handle attached, a three-sectional staff with chains linking the sections, various knives, and more. And none of these items looked like the cheap flea market, Look how cool I am; I bought a sword, type junk.
These were legitimate weapons.
“Do you know how to use all these?” I asked.
“Yes, weapons are my specialty. He…” he motioned down the hallway as he said this, “thinks I have too many, says it brings bad energy to have them, but I don’t care, I like ‘em.” Then he picked up two pairs of nunchucks and began to move. These ‘chucks had wooden handles connected by nylon cordage, so as he worked, the only sound they made was the whoosh-whoosh sound of the air being cut; the speed he generated with his swings was dazzling. He swung them high and low, turning side to side and doing it all in a tiny space without hitting the walls or giving me the slightest sense of fear. He was in absolute control of the weapons.
“Man, I’ve never seen anyone move them that fast. My brother had a set years ago that he’d play with, but nothing like this.”
Without slowing his movement, he asked, “Did your brother’s set have cordage or chain linking the handles?”
“His were chain,” I answered.
“Yeah, chain is clunky, loud, and slow. And you can wear through the metal; cordage is the way to go.”
“You can wear through the metal?” I asked skeptically.
Still chucking at lightning speed, my friend looked at me and nodded, “Yes, I’ve worn through several sets of chains.”
Given his matter-of-fact tone and obvious mastery, I didn’t actually doubt it. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a pack of gum. “Want one?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, “You can put mine on the table.
I did so, then unwrapped mine and put it in my mouth. Then I looked around for a trash can for the little silver foil wrapper.
“Hey,” he said, “ball that wrapper up and throw it at me.”
“Ok,” I said, wadding it up, “just say when.”
“Whenever you like,” he answered.
“Anytime at all?”
“Yep.”
I held the wrapper in my hand, watching as the handles of his ‘chucks whizzed by at skull-crushing speeds. Then, when he seemed relatively committed to a complex sequence, I quickly threw the wrapper at him.
THWAAP, he batted the wrapper straight back at me.
“Pick it up,” he ordered.
I did, then threw it again, this time harder.
THWAAP, he knocked it away again. I was stunned.
“Pick it up,” he repeated.
This continued, and I threw it several more times, but each time he defended perfectly, effortlessly. I’d of called it some “Matrix-level shit,” except this was 1997 and that movie wouldn’t be released until 1999.
From down the hallway, I heard a voice yell angrily, “Hay, whut yu doin! No fighting!!”
“We’re not fighting,” my friend retorted, “I’m just showing him some stuff.”
A little old Asian man, maybe in his 60s, but definitely the man from the photos downstairs, leaned his head in through the doorway to look at me. Then he told me, “Yu tell him tu, no reason all these weapon. Yu tink this help yu bad guy come?”
My friend answered, “Yeah, I’m about to drive off a bad guy right now.” Then, he turned and assumed a fighting stance toward the old man.
The old man’s eyes widened, then he shouted, “Oh, yu wanna mess wit me mudduh fukkuh?! Yu tink yu bad!” He turned and marched down the hall with purpose, then returned a moment later, waving a large semi-automatic pistol. “Yu tink yu toys stop a bullet, yu tink yu gang banger?!”
My friend dropped his nunchucks and held his hands up placatingly, but the old Chinese man continued to push him and yell at him threateningly. My friend fell to the ground with hands raised to defend himself, so the old man looked at me and said, “Yu see eveyting, it self defence, he attack me.” Then he turned back to my friend and shouted, “I kil yu, I don’t care, better than what happen I not find yu! Stupi Mexican!”
Now, they both broke out laughing, the kind that occurs between the closest of friends. Somehow, even though I barely knew either of these men who were brandishing deadly weapons, I never once felt any fear; there was mirth in the exchange.
The old man offered my friend his hand and helped him up, then he looked at me. “Whu yu?”
My friend answered for me, “He’s our neighbor. He let me juggle, so I brought him up. His shoulder is hurt. Can you help him?”
“Ohhhh, I see yu on funny bicycle.”
My friend jumped in again, “It’s a unicycle.”
“No, funny bicycle, I say, yu say yes Shifu.”
“Yes, Shifu,” my friend answered.
Looking back at me, he said, “Wish shoulder?”
I pointed to my right one, and he grabbed at my shirt, tugging it he said, “Take off.”
Then, to my friend, he said, “Get Jow.”
My friend responded, “There’s some in the drawer.”
Opening the drawer of the tiny table next to the bed, the old man saw many jars and began to shout again, “Five jar, yu steal from me!”
My friend again laughed and said, “No! Well, yes, but I need them!”
“Five jar! Yu tief, never change!”
I had my shirt off, and the old man grabbed my shoulder and moved it through its normal range of motion. He did not ask me what happened or where it hurt; he could feel everything he needed to. And to my surprise, his inspection was painless. Then he lifted my arm and had me hold it just so, then he lifted under my arm and, with a quick jerk, seated it more deeply than I’d been able to myself. “How feel?” he asked.
I moved my arm up and down a little, then said, “Wow, it’s great, thank you.”
“Good,” he answered, then he unscrewed the cap from one of the jars and began to rub a strong medicine-smelling ointment into my shoulder. “This make heal,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Dit da Jow,” he said in a tone that indicated everyone in the world knew what that was.
“Oh,” I answered.
When he’d finished rubbing in the ointment, he told me, “No shirt, Jow stain.”
I nodded and thanked him, then he left.
Looking at my friend, I asked, “How’d he know how to fix my shoulder?”
“He apprenticed under a Chinese doctor when he was young.”
“So he’s a doctor and a martial artist—that’s impressive,” I said.
“And a farmer, a blacksmith, a politician, and a diplomat. His father sent him to live with other masters for training; it was the old way.”
“He’d go live in other people’s houses? Like a worker?”
“No, like a son. And the sons from these other families would go to live with his father to do the same. All families of the aristocracy did this; it created political stability and deep bonds. When those boys grew to be men and were charged with ruling the country, they would be less likely to go to war with a family that had once taken them in and treated them as one of their own. It was that way for centuries, but then Mao Zedong came to power and began his revolutionary purges. My Shifu was young then, so he fled; he escaped over the wall, and eventually made his way to England. After a few years there, he received a letter from the queen that granted him special passage to the US.”
“The Queen gave him a letter?”
“Yes,” he said, standing up and walking into the hallway. He lifted a framed picture off the wall where it had been hanging and held it out for me to see.
Under the glass was a very ornate and official-looking legal document; it had a picture of a woman wearing a large crown, whom I ventured to guess was the queen. All of the writing was hand-calligraphic and looked a little like the copies I’d seen of the US Constitution, but much fancier. At the bottom of the document was a signature in ink, differently colored from the rest of the writing. I didn’t have time to actually read it, but it looked exactly how I’d expect a Queen’s letter to look.
“So he came to the US, then what?”
“He opened a school teaching martial arts, and when he was discovered, he started choreographing fight scenes for action movies. Right around then, he found me. I was just a street kid getting into trouble, fighting, and stealing, and I didn’t have anybody. So he took me in, set me straight, and I’ve been with him ever since.”
“Like he’d been taken in by those other families,” I said.
“Yeah, just like that,” he said.
“Okay, explain this to me, then. How did he climb the wall and escape if he was just a little kid? He’s what, sixty years old, maybe sixty-five?”
My new friend laughed at this, “sixty-five?! Try eighty-five!”
“He’s eighty-five? No friggin way! He looks way younger.”
My friend looked at me and asked, “How old do you think I am?”
“Mid-thirties?”
He laughed again, “I’m fifty-three.”
“No way!” I exclaimed, “How? You both look so much younger.”
My friend cupped his hands together, and I could tell he was trying to think of how to explain something complex but in a quick and easy way.
“We eat simple, exercise, regular training, meditation, the things you’d expect. But it’s also important to balance the body’s Chi.”
“What is Chi?”
“The body is made of energy, and with training, you can learn to control that energy.”
“Right,” I said; despite what I’d seen so far, I could not hide my skepticism.
Reaching under the table by the window, he slid out a couple of magazines that had been stowed there. The covers said “Kung Fu Magazine.” Opening one of them, he quickly found a page and held it out to me to read. On it were a series of black-and-white photos showing his Shifu standing in a robe, holding a coconut. Then, in the next photo, he raises his arm; in the next, his arm is traveling down with such speed that the camera only catches the blur; in the next, the coconut explodes from the impact, sending shards and liquid spraying out. Then, on the next page, there was another series of images, which were of the old man’s hands. I couldn’t figure out what was happening except that the latter photos looked foggy. “What’s happening in these pictures?” I asked.
“He’s focusing his Chi energy, generating so much heat that his fingertips are smoking.”
I looked even more closely at the photos. The quality wasn’t the best, kind of grainy, so I didn’t really believe it was smoke. Plus, now that I was studying juggling and magic, I’d learned some of the techniques magicians used to do their tricks. So I just figured the old Shifu was mixing in a bit of trickery for show. But that said, everything else I’d seen had been exactly what they’d said it was, impossible as the story seemed.
“Ok, seriously, how does one train that?”
“Well, one way is to learn Iron Palm. That’s what he’s doing with the coconut in the photo, but it takes a long time, lots of discipline, and a lot of Jow.”
“So what is Iron Palm, and what is Jow made from? Is it like Tiger Balm?”
“Jow is an herbal ointment made from special or even secret ingredients. There is a similar version you can buy here in the US, and yes, there’s Tiger Balm, but neither of those is the real stuff, so he makes his own, which is why he gets so mad when I take the jars.”
“And Iron Palm?”
“See that bag over there?” He pointed to the cloth sack next to the table that I’d seen earlier. “Pull it out from the wall and kneel in front of it.”
I did as he instructed.
“Now, hit it with the palm of your hand.”
I did. “Ouch, that’s hard!”
“Yes, it’s currently filled with small river stones. But when you begin, it’s filled with sand, and you strike it with the right palm, left palm, right butt of hand, left butt of hand, right back of hand, left back of hand, then roll your hand over, tuck away the thumb, and hit it with the knife edge of the top of each hand.” He demonstrated as he explained. “Now you try; just do it softly at first.”
Sitting straight, I began to repeat the pattern, hitting the bag with my right then my left, slowly gaining in speed and confidence as I fell into the pattern.
“Yes, just like that, now breathe,” he said.
“How long do I have to do it?” I asked.
“A year,” he answered.
“A YEAR!” I stopped hitting it.
“Yes, and each month, you change the filling, gradually making it harder and harder. So you start with sand, then small pebbles, wood chips, small river stones, etc., and by the end, you can do it with a solid piece of rock. But you have to rub Jow into your hands every day, breathe, meditate, and not miss any days because if you do, you have to start over.”
“And you’ve done this all the way through?”
He nodded, “Several times.”
“And then you can break coconuts with your bare hands?”
“I’ve seen a guy who could punch holes in cinder blocks after becoming a specialist in Iron Palm.”
“And he didn’t get hurt?”
“No, but he used real Jow. People here try to do it without having access to real Jow, and they mess themselves up.”
I was deeply fascinated by all this, but I noticed the light coming through the blinds had dimmed. I’d lost track of time, and the sun was going down while all of my juggling props were still out in the front area. “Hey, I don’t mean to run, but it’s getting late, and I gotta go grab my juggling stuff.”
“Yeah, alright, but I have a question for you: why don’t you believe in Chi energy?”
“I was raised Christian, I believe in that and nothing else,” I said confidently.
“Do you know what Jesus’ primary message to the world was?” he asked.
“None come unto the Father but through me?” I answered.
“Yes, he said that, but no, what was his real message?”
“Uh, I dunno,” I answered.
“Be cool,” he said.
“Be cool?” I asked.
“Yeah, be cool. Love your neighbor as yourself—that’s being cool. Don’t steal or covet—be cool. Treat others as you want to be treated—be cool. In fact, if you study any major religion that has ever existed, they all have the same message: Be cool.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” I said.
“Well, it’s just something to think about.” He stood up and headed for the stairs, so I got up to follow him.
As we reached the bottom and turned towards the exit, he said, “I really appreciate you letting me juggle the Fireballs, so I want to show you something. This is not something I ever show anyone, that’s not what it’s for, but I think you’ll understand.”
Stepping into the kitchen, which was now quite dark, he raised both of his hands in front of himself, palms up. Then, he began to breathe deeply, loudly, and with purpose. With each inhale, he would rub his fingertips together the way you might if you were balling up a paper straw wrapper. Then, on the exhalation, he would slowly separate fingers, drawing them outward the way one might if they were wrapped ‘round with a heavy rubber band. He repeated the exercise for about thirty seconds, then I began to see little flashes of light emanating from his fingers, like miniature LEDs darting along the lines of his fingerprints. He intensified his breathing, and the light became brighter; now, when he separated his fingers on the exhalations, the fingerprint pads on all ten of his fingers actively glowed. Not like a flashlight, not like some manmade source would. It was more delicate, the way a grouping of fireflies would light up if they all turned on at once, or how the bioluminescent algae look when they’re illuminating the surf off San Diego during a full moon. It was magical. He continued the demonstration, and on the final handful of breaths, I saw tiny sparks fly between his fingers, similar to how you can occasionally see the spark from a shock of static electricity when it’s discharged in dim light. Then, his breathing began to normalize, and as he did so, the light in his fingers dissipated. A few more moments passed, and he stood still in front of me, hands still raised in front of himself. He opened his eyes.
I spoke first, “I mean no disrespect, but would it be ok if I felt your hands?”
Without a word, he held his hands a few inches closer to me, indicating his blessing.
I reached up and felt his fingers, feeling the tips where the light had been, searching for some glow-in-the-dark fluid or some tiny device that could have emitted the light. But there was nothing there, nothing that could have created the effect, and his hands never left my sight. I dropped my hands in puzzlement.
“How?” I asked, dumbfounded.
He said nothing, only looked at me.
“It’s real?” I asked, though it wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“How?” I asked again.
“The mind and body are more powerful than you can imagine, but they must be trained.”
I nodded, hoping I’d understood, but not certain that I had. Then, I turned and walked toward the front door. Stepping outside, I turned back to look at him once more, “Thank you; you’ve given me much to think about.”
He nodded and started closing the door, but I stopped him. “Hey, what’s your name anyway?”
He looked at me and said, “Miguel. What’s your name?”
“Bill,” I answered.
“Bill,” he repeated, then he gently closed the door.
* * *
As I walked down the darkened walkway to collect my props, the night felt different, though nothing around me had changed.
Then a phrase I’d never heard before surfaced in my mind.
Humble Greatness.
And it fit…
Chapter 14: Jonathan
During several of our conversations, Dustin mentioned having an agent, but he never said where he’d found him or how much he made from the gigs he was working.
But he had one, and he was getting gigs, so I figured that if I was really going to do this, I needed an agent, too.
I just had to figure out how to find one.
Everyone was talking about this new internet thing, and how you could find anything on it, and that seemed like a good place to start. So on my way home from a morning pizza shift, I stopped by a grocery store to grab one of the free AOL CDs.
When I got home, I fired up the cheap computer my mom had bought when she went back to college. Then I inserted the AOL disc and double-clicked to start the install.
I knew that the internet worked over the phone line, so I double-checked to make sure my mom didn’t need to make any calls, then clicked the button to dial in.
The modem made its distinctive, “urrrr EEEE urrr NNNGGGG CRRRRcrrrr KEEEEEEE grrr nnnnnng ding ding ding,” sounds, and then the computer speaker chirped, “You’ve got mail,” and a little mailbox with a red flag popped up. I clicked it to see what I’d gotten, but the “mail” turned out to be just a welcome message from AOL.
From there, I found a search field and tried to look up local agents or entertainment bookers, but nothing came up. I tried searching for some other things too, just to see what it could do, but it seemed most businesses hadn’t yet bothered to get themselves listed.
So, I grabbed a good old-fashioned phone book.
Flipping through the large Yellow Pages, I found the section that featured local entertainment agencies. Some of the ads were much larger than the others, and I knew from when my parents had listed our family’s sign business in the Yellow Pages years before, that those bigger ads cost extra. I extrapolated this to mean that the bigger ads were from bigger, more successful agencies, so I didn’t start with those.
Instead, I looked for the simple single-line ads, the ones with just a business name and phone number listed. Sliding my finger across these, I landed on “A Plus Entertainment.”
I had no idea what to say, so I was beside myself with nerves, but I dialed the number anyways, and a nice-sounding lady answered the phone. After exchanging hellos, I said, “Hey, I’ve got a party coming up, and we wanted to hire a juggler. How much would that be?”
The lady said she’d have to get back to me after getting some quotes and asked for my phone number.
This froze me cold, and I started freaking out internally. I don’t actually want to book a juggler, I just wanted to know what they could make, and I thought she’d know, but she doesn’t, and I really don’t want to give her my number. I just want this agonizing subterfuge to be over.
“Oh, that’s okay.” I said, “Never mind. Thank you.”
She sounded confused but said, “Okay, well, I’m sorry I didn’t have the information you needed, but please keep us in mind if you ever need A Plus Entertainment.”
I hung up.
Gah, why is it so hard for me to talk to strangers? I hate that about myself, but I don’t know how to fix it.
I wanted to give up the whole thing. But that’d mean I was giving up on the juggling dream, and I didn’t want to give up; I couldn’t. I was committed — I’d even sold my truck to buy more props.
I took a deep breath and then dialed the next number without giving myself time to think.
This time, a guy answered, and I was more specific: “Yeah, how much for a juggler who can do balls, clubs, and rings?”
And, as with the first call, he told me he’d have to get back to me.
Ugh! At least I wasn’t as nervous this time.
Feeling frustrated, I called the next number in line.
A friendly-sounding fellow picked up, “Barnaby Entertainment, your premier costume character and birthday party specialist, this is Benny; how can I make your day?”
Having grown a little more confident, I asked, “How much would it cost to hire a juggler who can juggle balls, clubs, rings, a bowling ball, and a Chinese yoyo?”
There was silence for a moment, and then, instead of answering my question, he said, “So, you’re a juggler huh?”
Panic seized me; I was caught. I nearly hung up the phone, but something stopped me. Haltingly, I said, “Yes, sir.”
“Do you do anything else?”
“No, sir, I’m just getting started.”
“Ok, well, I offer more costume characters than anyone else in the area. We do special events and birthday parties. I’m also the most expensive party booker around. I figure that somebody has to be the most expensive, so it might as well be me. Hey, how tall are you anyway?”
“ 6'5" ” , I answered.
“Wow, that’s a little big for most of the costumes, but you’d fit in the bigger ones. Alright, let me introduce you to my juggler. You got a pen?”
“I do,” I said.
“His name is Jonathan, but he performs as Joyful the Clown. Maybe you guys can practice together. Here’s his number, 909.449.1133.”
I wrote down the number he gave me and repeated it back to make sure I’d taken it down correctly. Then I thanked Benny for the information and hung up.
I looked at the number and wondered, What are the chances it’s the same Jonathan who came to my school in fifth grade? How crazy would that be? How many juggling Jonathans can there be in Southern California? I doubted it would be the same one, but you never know.
I picked up the phone and dialed this new number.
A happy-sounding voice picked up, “Hello, Jonathan speaking.”
I introduced myself and told him about talking with Benny and that I’d like to get together to juggle sometime. He said he’d like to, but was right in the middle of moving. Would I mind getting back with him in a few weeks?
“Sure thing, I can do that. I just have one more question: Have you ever performed at elementary schools?”
“Uh, no, I haven’t, but I’d like to.”
“Yeah, me too!”
We both laughed at this, then hung up.
Finally, a juggler who actually wants to juggle with me.
I opened my paper calendar and wrote a reminder on it to call him back in three weeks.
* * *
I continued with my normal routine: working and practicing five balls every night. And one day, while practicing four clubs in the front yard, I even made it to twenty-one catches.
I was getting better, little by little.
Three weeks later, I called Jonathan again.
When I did, a kindly-sounding woman answered.
“Hi, can I speak to Jonathan?” I asked.
“Oh no, he’s moved, but I’ll give you his new number. Is this Joe?”
“Uh, no, this is Bill.”
“Oh, hi Bill, this is Nancy, Jonathan’s mother.”
“It’s good to meet you, Nancy, Jonathan’s mother,” I responded.
She laughed at this and said, “It’s nice to meet you, too. Ok, do you have a pen?”
“I do.”
“Okay, it’s 909-342-9912.”
I thanked her, and we hung up.
Then I called the new number.
* * *
We made plans to meet at a park near my house, so I rode my bicycle there with all my juggling gear packed in a backpack.
In my mind, I’d built up this picture of who Jonathan must be: probably a fifty-something, long-haired, tie-dye-wearing, grizzly-bearded hippie type. But when I actually saw him, he was this athletic guy, about 5'11", with piercing blue eyes, short black hair, and a big, disarming smile. Definitely not the crusty old hippie I’d pictured.
We introduced ourselves and got to juggling.
As we practiced, I admitted to Jonathan that I’d pictured him as a fifty-year-old hippie with long hair and tie-dye, and he laughed, because he’d assumed the same thing about me. We both cracked up over it. And we discovered that we had a lot in common: I was twenty, and he was twenty-two; we both had two brothers, and, weirdly enough, both worked as assistant managers at different Little Caesars Pizza locations. We even shared stories of pranks we’d pulled on our pizza-making co-workers, then laughed when we discovered we’d come up with similar gags; it was a “great minds think alike” kind of moment.
When I mentioned that my parents had divorced, Jonathan shared that his father had been killed in a tragic accident, so both of us had grown up with our moms. Then he told me about the birthday party gigs he’d been doing for the past few years: twisting balloons, painting faces, and working with Benny, the agent who’d introduced us. Jonathan explained that when he did gigs for Benny, he’d dress up as Batman, a Power Ranger, or some other popular kids’ character, drive to the party, and entertain. He also did restaurant work on his own, going table to table making balloon animals for tips.
I appreciated how open he was about it all. He didn’t seem threatened or guarded, or like he was trying to keep secrets. He was generous, giving, and happy to share what he knew. From the get-go, Jonathan and I were on the same wavelength.
Near the end of the session, Jonathan pulled out a diabolo, or Chinese yo-yo, and I said, “Hey, I have one of those too!” We started messing around, showing each other the few tricks that we knew.
Then we tried passing clubs, which was a disaster! Nothing was connecting, and it took us a while to realize we’d each learned different timing; So while he was passing on every throw, I was passing on every other. Eventually, we figured it out, and even with all the drops and misses, we had fun.
Then Jonathan told me stories about rock climbing, cliff jumping, and skydiving. And I shared stories about going bungee jumping and flatland BMX freestyle riding. It all felt effortless, like we’d known each other for a lot longer than a single afternoon.
At the end of the session, I asked, “You wanna do this again sometime?”
He said, “Absolutely.”
After all those weeks of searching and dead ends, I’d finally found a juggler who also wanted to juggle.
Chapter 15: Juggle Club
Jonathan and I started meeting a few times each month to practice together. In one of these sessions, he told me about a guy named Bobby Hartman that he’d run into at an event he was working. Bobby ran a juggling club called “The San Dieguito Manipulation Society” out of the Boys and Girls Club in Encinitas.
The club met every Tuesday, and there were a number of really good jugglers there.
Then Jonathan added, “Do you want to check it out?”
Knowing it was a forty-minute drive from where I lived in Escondido to the club in Encinitas, I said, “Heck yeah, I’d love to check it out, but I don’t have any way to get there.”
Jonathan shook his head as if to say no problem, and said, “I’ll pick you up.”
* * *
The following Tuesday, we pulled into the Boys and Girls Club, parked, and walked into a basketball gym. Upon entering, we saw a handful of people juggling and a dozen kids running around. Off to one side was a thin, sandy-haired guy with a sharp nose. Jonathan pointed at him and said, “That’s Bobby Hartman. I watched his show once, and for the finale, he juggled three torches on a six-foot unicycle. He’s really good!”
Bobby noticed we were looking lost, so he came over to welcome us and said that Sean was supposed to pop in later. I just nodded my head, pretending I knew who that was. Bobby told us to have fun, then walked over to give some of the kids tips on their juggling. I was excited to get to juggling, but first, I took in the whole scene. In the far corner of the basketball court, there was a “staircase to nowhere.” And by nowhere, I mean it was an obstacle like you might see at a skatepark — something designed to be ridden. Next to it was a man on a unicycle, wearing bright teal tights and a black tank top. Grabbing the seat with one hand, he began hopping the unicycle up the stairs. One by one, he balanced and hopped and balanced again until he’d made it to the platform at the top of the five wooden steps. Then he made a show of losing his balance and rode backward down the five steps. My heart skipped a beat because I thought he was going to eat sh*t, but it was all part of the show. Then he repeated the process, hopping up the stairs again and repeating his backward descent. Jonathan whispered to me, “That’s Chaz, he’s been performing at Balboa Park for years. He’s got a twenty-one-foot tall unicycle that’s painted hot pink, and he drives around San Diego with it strapped to a rack on top of his VW bus.”
“He’s amazing!” I said.
“Yeah, he’s made an amazing recovery. A few years ago, he was doing a street show in Balboa Park, and while he had the twenty-one-foot unicycle leaned against a building so he could climb up it, he slipped and fell. Apparently, the city had painted some kind of slippery goop on the tops of the buildings to try and deter birds, and when he’d tried to grab onto the roofline, it made him slip off. It put him in a wheelchair for a while, and everyone thought he’d never ride again, but here he is.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stared wide-eyed.
In another corner of the gym, we saw two guys passing clubs. One was tall and athletic-looking, with dark hair and a swift smile. The other was thin and wiry, with reddish-brown hair and freckles. He wore a baseball cap backward and was leaned forward with one leg flagged out to the side. As he was passing the clubs, he was throwing the passes from his right hand across to the tall guy, but they were going from front to back, through his leg, then coming up over his shoulder as they were sent. It was as smooth as it was mind-boggling. Continuing these throws, the other guy started throwing tricks of his own, including overhand passes, behind-the-backs, fast flats, and reverse flips. However, no matter what he threw, the guy throwing the under-the-leg and over-the-shoulder passes kept his groove. The skill level was insane!
Having put the kids in motion with some juggling exercises, Bobby rejoined us.
“What’s the story with these guys?” Jonathan asked Bobby, pointing to the two juggling gurus who were passing.
“The tall guy is Steve, a computer programmer and game designer; he actually designed one of the top-selling sports games of all time. The other guy with the hat is Jeff King; he’s a pro skateboarder and part of the Caught Clean crew.”
“Caught Clean crew?” I asked.
“Yeah, Jeff, Sean McKinney, and Laban Phideas released a series of videos fusing skateboarding and juggling. It’s the best-selling juggling video of all time because it sold to both jugglers and skaters.”
As he said this, I watched Jeff begin throwing self-throws behind his back while still maintaining the outgoing trick passes to Steve; the skill was staggering. Feeling more inspired than ever, I asked Bobby if he’d give me some tips for five-ball juggling, and he told me to grab my props. After watching a few of my very short runs, he said, “You’ve got the basics; now it’s just lots of practice.”
“Thank you,” I said, and he walked away to help a group of kids just arriving.
Jonathan pulled out his juggling clubs and said, “Wanna pass?”
“Yes, yes I do.”
So we passed and tried our best not to look like noobs. After 30 minutes or so, Jeff King came over and talked to us. He had the easygoing style typical in the San Diego skate scene, an easy smile, and an acerbic yet endearing wit. We liked him immediately. “Mind if I feed in?” Jeff asked.
“Feed in?”
“Yeah, pass between the three of us?”
Jonathan and I didn’t know how to do that, but he assured us it was easy. Positioning himself as the feeder, or the person who’d be carrying the weight of the pattern, he told us when to throw. After a few false starts, we were passing clubs between all three of us. It was amazing; his throws were perfect, even when we threw him junk throws or off-time. Then he started throwing tricks on top of being in the most difficult position in the pattern. It felt like all I had to do was put my hand out, and the club would land in it. It was hard to comprehend how he’d gotten so good.
After a bit, Jeff said he needed to grab something from his car and would be back, so we continued practicing.
When he returned, Jeff interrupted us and asked conspiratorially, “Do you like spicy food?”
Jonathan said, “I do,” then added, “within reason.”
Jeff randomly yelled, “Hey,” across the gym, then motioned to the few people who’d actually looked to join us. Once he had a group of us huddled, he asked, “Anyone know what this is?” He cracked the lid on a little plastic to-go container and took out a couple of orange peppers.
Jonathan asked, “Is that a habanero?”
Jeff’s eyes narrowed mischievously, “It is. My family owns a restaurant. Who wants to try one?”
I shook my head. I don’t eat spicy food at all, and I’d heard habaneros were brutal. But Jonathan was braver, “I’ll try a little piece.” Jeff tore off a tiny piece for him, then asked if anyone else wanted one. One of the kids hesitantly raised his hand, so Jeff gave him a little piece as well. Then Jeff said, “Bottoms up,” and took a good-sized bite of the pepper himself. For a few moments, everything seemed OK, then Jeff started to groan. “Ahhhh, that’s intense,” he said.
Jonathan took a little bite of his and, within a few seconds, also started to react, “Oh man! That is HOT!”
Jeff said, “You just have to keep going,” and then he took another bite. The spice started to hit him hard at that point, and he began to leak drool off his lower lip.
Seeing this reaction, the kid who’d accepted a piece hesitated, not so sure he wanted one after all.
This continued for some time, with Jeff eating little pieces, drooling, and making the distinctly miserable sounds of hot pepper bliss. It seemed that skateboarding and juggling were not the only areas where he liked to push his limits.
When the pepper demonstration was over, Jeff declared that he had to run.
We shook hands, and he jetted.
We continued practicing right up until closing time, wanting to make the most of every second we could. The crowd thinned as more people went home, and it seemed like nothing else interesting would happen tonight. But then a guy wearing jeans and an old T-shirt walked in. He wore a navy-blue baseball cap over dark brown hair that peeked out from its brim. The only other thing that really stood out to me was that his forearms were abnormally large, like a real-life Popeye the Sailor. I quietly wondered what would cause the body to develop in that way. The man nodded a silent hello to Bobby, then set a small black bag on the ground, opened it up, and started to juggle three shiny metallic-looking peacock blue juggling balls. We only had to watch for a few seconds to realize we were in the presence of juggling greatness. I dropped everything I was doing and sat on the bleachers to watch. The man’s hands moved in impossible ways and at a speed that’s hard to imagine if you’ve never seen it yourself. He would throw them up and do a pirouette, throw another one up and do a double pirouette, throw another and do a triple pirouette. He juggled between his legs, behind his head, over his shoulders, above his head, off parts of his body, in patterns I’ve never seen before. I didn’t know it was possible to do so much with only three beanbags, and his trick vocabulary was astounding. Then he worked up to four balls and more amazing tricks. Five balls, six balls, seven balls, and eight balls followed, each more impressive than what had come before. Then, when my head was already melted by everything I’d seen, he did a dozen flashes of nine-ball. Plus, a number of runs with nine balls that were probably in the twenty-five to thirty-five catch range. And he did all of this with 3-inch beanbags. Most people switched to smaller beanbags for anything more than five, but he’d done nine with full-size props. After this, he put the juggling balls away, picked up a basketball, and played by himself. Bobby came over and sat with us. “That’s Sean McKinney,” he said. “He won the gold medal in the juniors division at the International Jugglers Association, and he’s worked on cruise ships.”
“He’s amazing,” I said.
“He’s one of the best,” Bobby answered.
As Sean played basketball, I wondered why he played basketball at all when he was so good at juggling; why do anything else?
I decided I wanted to be that good one day, to have that level of mastery with three balls, and to juggle nine balls. I just hoped it wasn’t too late. Most people started much younger than Jonathan and I did. And if we’re to have any hope of catching up, I knew that we’d need to train even harder.
* * *
From that day on, every Tuesday, Jonathan drove thirty-five minutes out of his way to pick me up, then backtracked to the club where we’d juggle, and then afterward, he’d drive out of his way again to drop me off before going back to his house. Round-trip, this would add almost 2 hours of extra driving to his day.
He could have said, “Sorry, man, you gotta figure out how to get there yourself,” but he never did.
Many people are short-sighted. If they don’t see an immediate benefit for themselves, they won’t go out of their way.
But Jonathan wasn’t like that; he was big picture, always thinking expansively. He could see possibilities, and he dared to believe that better things were just over the horizon; we just had to work hard and keep going to realize them.