They are not amused. They ask more questions in Spanish. You irritate them with too many repetitions of "no comprende." Suddenly they are treating you as if you have been spreading revolutionary propaganda to every person in Spain.

 

At this point you begin to think that perhaps you should have asked for permission first. The crowd starts to get involved. The police have grown to eight, sensing a riot. People you don't know from Adam are screaming at the top of their lungs in your defense, an audience-turned­attorney. To no avail.

 

With a cop on each arm they drag you away from the scene of the crime. Two grey uniformed militia and you in your baggy pants, suspenders and loud colored shirt go marching down the Barcelona streets and off to prison.

 

The walking seems to go on longer than an Alaskan winter. Doesn't juggling in the street qualify as an important enough crime to merit a police car, or are vehicles reserved for more serious offenders like parking violators and litterbugs?

 

People are looking at you differently now because there are two policemen at your sides. When they start to glare at you like you are a rapist you begin to wish you were never very good at juggling.

 

The Barcelona police station appears at last. No rights are read, no charges are explained. You are put alone in a cell.

 

But that doesn't worry you. They didn't take away your juggling bag!

 

Your only contact with the outside world is a single window with bars separating you from the sounds of children playing in the street. An ironic idea hits you once you realize your arms fit through the bars of the window. You start to do the very thing that got you in jail in the first place - you juggle for the children outside even though all they can see is your arms.

 

What a funny sight for them! The children are laughing so loudly you begin to worry that they are making too much noise. So you stop juggling through the bars.

 

You hear guards now outside the cell door and imagine you are Brad Davis from the film "Midnight Express." The voices of the police are getting louder. They are on their way in to cut off your hands.