"No one knows what the first drop line was, because it was stolen before the first fumble hit the ground." Thibauld "Cass" Kaid. 

The History of Juggling, Part 1: The Early Years 

Now that the IJA qualifies for membership in AARP (for our non-U.S. readers, that's the American Association of Retired Persons; can you say, ' uinquagenerian"? ...no, I didn't think so... me either...), it won't be long before the Social Security checks start rolling in and we'll all be looking at affordable retirement juggling in Phoenix or Fort Lauderdale. As our organization finds itself fancying cardigan sweaters, berets, and green plaid pants, we can look forward to a whole new world of festival excitement. Picture the summer IJA Games, soon to include Spinning Dental Plates, Three-Bald Open, Metamucil Endurance, Walker Combat, Juggling With Your Eyes Closed (While Staying Awake), and the very challenging Alzheimer's Obstacle Course. 

Joggling events will become easier to win as more and more well-meaning geezers fail to remember where the hell they were going in such a hurry. Vendors will market oversized props that can be seen without the use of bifocals, possibly even offering items so large that the juggler won't need to stoop or bend to retrieve a drop (you can see the ad campaign now, can't you? "It's fallen, and I can't pick it up!")

Hearing aids will come equipped with a special Heckle-No! (TM) muting feature, and genetically engineered soft apples will help chomp-challenged jugglers maintain their self- respect. Club Renegade will wrap up by 8 p.m., and will pass the hat for the Geritol. Oh, and look for "Juniors" to mean "anybody under 40," too, as we glide into our golden years. Y'know, just thinking about it makes me want to put on a fedora, hunker down behind the wheel of a big sedan, and drive slowly to a festival with my turn signal on all the way! 

That juggling itself is as old as the hills - even older than the IJA - is easily verified by noting the vast numbers of fossilized juggling balls, spinning balls, and walking globes that litter the earth's crust: they can be found along lake shores and in riverbeds, and often just beneath the surface of most topsoil (the fact that these ponderous prehistoric props aren't especially spherical bears mute testimony to the primitive state of the art way back then). 

The earliest jugglers were cavepersons who, afraid that the Big Bright Things in the sky (or "Great Balls of Fire," as described by some early religious tracts and rock 'n' roll songs) would hurt them, pitched these handy hefty items upwards in a naive but cro-magnonish attempt to scare the Big Bright Things away. 

As any Darwinian can tell you, those individuals who subsequently caught these projectiles on the return trip with, say, their foreheads, were quickly and mercifully removed from the gene pool, leaving behind buddies whose offspring's DNA would program them to catch falling things with other, more versatile, body parts (Note: many experts insist that some of the semi-simian individuals who looked up to see where their projectiles had gone actually adapted to the inevitable sudden cranial crunches by living with the consequences of multiple concussions (even learning to anticipate, nay, savor repeated pummeling), instead of having the courtesy to simply croak on the spot and get it over with. Persuasive evidence suggests that their descendants flourished and even today watch [and star in] network sitcoms.). 

Perhaps the only enduring linguistic legacy of those primeval jugglers is our occasional reference to the inventor of the eternally classic toss of a prop from the hand to the ground: I speak of none other than that well- known King of the Jungle Jive, Alley Oop. We, as countless generations before us, still call the hand-to-ground throw "Oop's." 

It is also generally accepted that quasi- sentient primates from the Dawn of History invented the other staple of the juggling world, the club (thank you, Mister Kubrick!). Bigger and heavier than even the early Van Wyck two -hollowed -out-logs -glued -together prototypes, it's no wonder that every depiction of cave guys extant shows them looking pretty unhappy with the whole idea; in fact, I don't believe that any of them ever progressed beyond juggling just one of those honkers - to do so, they would have had to first come up with the notion of "2," which would have taken the Neanderthal equivalent of an Albert Einstein a lifetime of concentrated grunting to work out. 

It's probably just as well, though; juggling two clubs for the tribe only would've prompted some ancestral heckler to say, "Yeah, but can you do, uh, can'you do, uh, uhhh..." resulting in a splitting headache with another million years or so to go before they invent Tylenol.

(Note: an academic researcher of some repute once hypothesized that the juggling club was actually invented in recent times, by a faction of a centrally-located food-and-ale group of Howdy Doody's animal pal's progeny's admirers, who produced their prop using the surface friction of a vat. His central thesis came to be known as the (take a deep breath now!) "Sub Hub Grub-Pub Flub-a-Dub Cub Club's Tub-Rub Club Nub," and, let me tell you, it was drubbed to a stub, Bub.) 

It should be clear by now that most early juggling was "earth" juggling, but the fundamental elements of "fire" and "air" played a part, too. Torches, I suspect, came into being as soon as our ancestors learned which end of the burning stick they could hold. Fire eating was invented by one spectacularly stupid specimen (known as "Lynk") who was, well, just kind of hungry at the time (we still miss him). Air juggling has always held the advantage of being lots cheaper than other branches of our art, mainly because its standard props are completely non-existent; this also explains its perennial lack of popularity, since vendors have never quite mastered the knack of successfully packaging quantities of absolutely nothing, and selling it. (Surprisingly, folks who juggle air are still among us; today, we call them "mimes" and "computer programmers", and either way are typically more deserving of sympathy than disdain.) 

One final note: although most other juggling toys' origins are not quite so primordial, one in particular stands out as predating most modern civilizations by a long shot. In the earliest Egyptian settlements along the upper Nile, long before the Pharaohs arrived with their pyramid schemes, the Big- Bright-Thing-worshipers believed that among the earthly entities meant to be revered, the sacred scarab (a tough desert beetle with an iridescent carapace) was near the top of the list. 

(On a personal note, I must say that, considering that these insects sometimes grow as big as your computer's mouse, it isn't surprising that they were accorded some kind of respect. I mean, if I saw one in my kitchen, let's just say it'd be a religious experience for both of us, Jackson!) 

What is not nearly so widely known is that the common scarab (Scarabaeus sacer) had a truly bizarre relative that inhabited the nearby wetlands: the now extinct Scarabaeus phasmidum. Take your basic one-inch dung beetle and stretch its body vertically to a height of 22" or so, and you have a rough idea of how this deadend mutation from the walking-stick family must have looked. Strangely, its legs weren't any longer than its scarab cousin's; only its body was grotesquely tall and thin. 

You can imagine the shock of encountering one of these creatures down in the tall grasses of the riverbanks! Still, it wasn't all that fearsome; most folks reacted instinctively by simply tipping it over, which turned out to be a pretty effective ploy. Nature had provided the insect's legs and pincers with a tenacious grip, though, so if the bump wasn't too hard it could usually swing back to vertical on its own. When the youngsters of those ancient times discovered how much fun it was to bat the poor thing back and forth with a couple of stiff reeds, Scarabaeus phasmidum's doom was sealed. 

Much, much later, medieval scholars (presumably reacting to fantastic tales they'd heard in their childhood that the legendary bug was some kind of nightmarish other- worldly bloodsucker) misnamed it the Devil's Tick - a name that survives in only slightly altered form to this very day. 

Send your historical, uh, hysterical brainstorms (things other jugglers would find funny [which shouldn't be too awfully hard, I mean, come on, we're jugglers, for Pete's sake]- like knock-knock jokes, Tom Swifties, interesting graffiti - hey, if you're going to scrape the bottom of the barrel, at least let it be a barrel of monkeys) , to the "Funnies" editor (that's meeeee!!): Jerry Martin; Richfield, MN.