Tangier Sound

Mike from Maquoketa writes:

A little fiction to go with some recent events. It’s probably not the best written, but I just thought I’d send it anyway.

The other day, as I wandered to the other side of the city, I found a gathering. There were signs telling everyone that they were welcome and to come join the party. As I slowly walked in, I glanced around at everyone. I recognized a few people from the area where I grew up. We didn’t necessarily know each other, but we’d seen each other before.

While I was still taking things in, I overheard a kid ask someone about how he’d like to learn how to juggle. Now, I had learned to juggle and was alright with it. I mean, I wasn’t going to be juggling chainsaws anytime soon, but figured I had the basics down and could help point this gent in the direction of how I learned. So, I grabbed a few cans of soda and made my way back to him. I started to tell him about how I learned this from a guy in my neighborhood. A couple of the people surrounding us began to turn around and look at me. I figured they were just interested as well, so I continued. I explained a couple of basics, as I was taught, and then began to juggle the cans. Now, I know that I am no master juggler, but nothing could have prepared me for what happen next.

A couple of the onlookers pushed in and, losing my concentration, I dropped the cans. They kind of tried to ignore me and just talk to the person I was trying to talk to.

“If you want to juggle, I’d suggest that you look into a couple of videos by people who have studied the technique of the great classic clowns,” one said.

“Yeah, one of those would be better than what this guy is trying to show you,” said another. And a third had to get his word in that he had his own system to learn. It wasn’t immediately accessible to a beginner, but it was top notch stuff. Those around him agreed by nodding.

“What’s so wrong with what I was doing?” I asked.

“Well,” one started, “I heard you talking and the guy you learned from wasn’t very nice to us a while back. You can’t go spreading his name around here.”

“You also were juggling clockwise, which shows you’re also teaching the kid incorrectly. It will just stifle him in the future when he is ready to take the next step. Bad habits are hard to break.”

The other man just continued to push his own instruction. I could see that the kid was somewhat overwhelmed and trying to hear everyone’s advice.
It seemed that the whole situation had attracted a little attention of more surrounding people. A couple of people that I recognized began to try and show the kid how they learned from the same guy that I had. The guys around us began to look at each other as if to say to each other, “Where did these jokers come from?”

“Why are you trying to take the boy down a dead end road? He’ll never get far by starting this way.”

By this time, the one guy had started to try and convince us that his stuff was really good and we should look into it so that we could get past what we had learned from this guy who had been so rude to them.

Some people started to get louder. Insults started. Those I had recognized and I couldn’t figure out what the deal was. We were just trying to help the kid learn to juggle. Some started trying to defend themselves. We soon realized that we were a minority in the group.

Eventually, some man with some sort of badge came over. He seemed to have some sort of authority. Things calmed down when he came over and told everyone to knock it off and calm down. He seemed to mostly keep eye contact with the “clockwise jugglers” as if he was more directly speaking to us. I decided to go back and try again showing the kid figuring that things would be more calm now.

“Don’t go back and teach him to juggle like that jerk. You’re just going to frustrate him in the future.”

Everyone started chiming in on their side of the clockwise-counter-clockwise issue and things got louder than before. The man with the badge came back and told everyone it was enough. If we could not keep things down he was going to start throwing people out. At this point, I decided that I was leaving.

As I was walking out, I saw that the one man had gotten up on to a chair in order to let everyone know about his wonderful juggling resources that showed you the correct and proper way. I also found a sign that I had missed on my way in, “Clown Convention – Everyone Welcome.”

I think I mostly just wanted to vent a bit. Now, I think I’ll go and do something constructive with that five string in my hands.

-Mike from Maquoketa

Mike, just remember that there are good clowns and bad clowns.