THE FAKE SHOWER

In this pattern, the balls travel in the circular path of a shower, but the throws are made by both hands alternately as in a cascade. Hence, it is much easier than a shower, but to the non-juggler it looks much harder on account of the hand motions involved. Many jugglers can do a shower well in only one direction (counter­clockwise for a right-handed juggler). By contrast, once the counter-clockwise (CCW) fake shower is learned, the clockwise (CW)

version is almost trivial to learn.               .

Furthermore, as with the shower, this pattern can be done with any number of balls.

The basic idea of the fake shower (three­ball CCW version) is as follows. Assume there is one ball in each hand and one in the air. Remember that each ball traverses a CCW arc so the ball in the air will be falling to the left of center.

The right hand throws its ball up in a CCW arc, and immediately crosses over the left wrist to catch the falling ball. With the wrists still crossed right over left, the left hand throws its ball up (again in a CCWarc). The hands are then immediately uncrossed and the left hand catches the ball falling toward it. Then the right hand throws its ball and the above movements are repeated. For the clockwise version, merely reverse "left" and "right" and replace "CCW" by "CW" in the above description.

If you can juggle two balls in one hand, there is an indirect method of learning the fake shower which you may find easier. Juggle two balls in a wide CCW circle in your left hand and hold the third ball in your right hand. What you are going to do is steal one of the balls out of the circular pattern and replace it with the ball from your right hand. Move your right hand in close to the right side of the two-ball circle. When one ball just passes the peak of its arc and you are about to throw the next ball with the left hand, instead throw the ball from the right hand so that it moves into the same arc that the other balls have been following. Immediately reach with the right hand over the left wrist and catch

the falling ball. With the wrists still crossed, throw the next ball from the left hand. Then uncross the hands and go back to the two-ball circle in the left hand.

Now try to make the steal several times with as little delay as possible in between. (This stealing move in itself is a nice trick.) In the fake shower you are essentially stealing every ball. That is, after you make the steal and uncross your hands, the next ball you must steal is the one your left hand threw when your wrists were crossed.

In addition to being an easy substitute for the shower, the pattern described above can be viewed as the basis for a great number of cross-wrist tricks such as the one Dave Walden described on pages 8 and 9 of the March-April 1977 issue of this Newsletter. As mentioned earlier, the fake shower can be done with any number of balls. A little thought will reveal that it is merely a folded cascade. Imagine the figure-eight path of the cascade folded down the center so that the right side lies on top of the left side.

All throws then take place to the right of center and all catches to the left, so this is the CCW fake shower. Since the cascade can be done with any odd number of balls, so can the fake shower. For an even number, we lose the cascade interpretation but the fake shower remains. With four balls, it is simply a variant of the classic two-in-each-hand four-ball pattern. Even though the hands continue to cross and uncross, there is no ball interaction between the two hands. A ball thrown by one hand is caught by that same hand. To learn this trick, begin by juggling two balls in a CCW circle in each hand. The left and right hand throws must be made alternately. Then gradually move the two circles toward each other and throw the balls higher until they merge into one circle. If you use, say, two white balls in one hand and two red balls in the other, the balls will traverse the arc in the order red, white, red, white, etc. which makes a very pretty display.

I do not know the origin of this pattern, but I learned the three-ball version from Rawd Holbrook who got it from Hemlock Robinson in Amherst. I figured out the extension to four balls while programming the pattern on a computerized juggling simulator.

David LeDoux

MIT Center for Theoretical Juggling

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