My wife, out of the blue, decided to take a beginners’ juggling class through the Forever Learning Institute.
Well, it was out of the blue to me anyway. I guess she had been plotting this for a while so she could show up our son-in-law and local grandson, who are pretty good at juggling. Juggling balls, that is — not knives or flaming batons or power saws.
My wife has actually gotten pretty good at it. She can toss up three little balls and keep them in the air for several seconds before they start falling to the floor. One woman in her class even told me that she is the best of the students.
I’m proud of her for doing this. And my Thursday morning breakfast buddies seemed pretty impressed, too.
“I think it’s good when people take on something that is new to them and might be a little uncomfortable to try,” Ken remarked.
So what might he like to take on? “I’ve always thought how cool it would be to learn how to hypnotize people,” Ken said.
That would probably make the people he was trying to hypnotize feel uncomfortable, not him. But I held back my opinion.
It got me thinking, though. What had I taken on lately that made me uncomfortable to try. Actually, I am not a natural when it comes to learning new things — so just about everything I first attempt is uncomfortable to me.
I usually have to be coaxed, cajoled or threatened to try something different or a little intimidating. That’s just me.
But then I remembered that Matt Emery, the principal at Marquette Montessori Academy who recently interviewed me for his “Around the Bend Then and Now” podcast, had pulled out a copy of an old South Bend Tribune article I had written in 1976.
That’s 47 years ago. I had all but forgotten that story (of about 10,000 I wrote for the Tribune) until he stuck it under my nose. It brought back the same goose bumps I experienced on the day that I wrote it.
The headline read: “Hey, Mom, look where your Billy is.”
And accompanying the story was a picture of me on top of a bi-plane about 1,000 feet in the air and above the then-called MIchiana Regional Airport. Wearing a leather helmet and goggles, I probably looked like Rocky the Flying Squirrel.
Egads. How did I get talked into that?
Well, an air show was in town and its barn-storming pilot, Joe Hughes, was looking for some publicity. He wanted a newspaper reporter to “wing-walk’’ on top of his plane — which really meant being belted to a post on his bi-plane’s top wing and having your feet placed into footholds.
Here is where the uncomfortable part of this story comes in: I was afraid of flying. I was afraid of heights. And I was afraid that the leather helmet might mess up my hair — ha, ha.
That’s how badly I craved a good byline as a cub reporter.
So I did it — even though I almost backed out after climbing up a ladder to the top of the plane and feeling I was too high off the ground even then.
I will have to say that speeding down a runway at about 100 mph while standing on a wing of a plane and then suddenly finding yourself up in the wild blue yonder was the biggest adrenalin rush I have ever had (except for maybe kissing Beth Miller after my spin-the-bottle turn at a post-prom party).
Tribune photographer Joe Raymond was in an accompanying plane and snapped a picture of me tentatively waving. The wind was hitting me so hard that I could hardly lift my hand.
I overcame my fears so that I could be on the front page of The Tribune. So, yeah, I guess I can do something uncomfortable from time to time. I’m not advocating wing-walking to anyone, but trying (and maybe struggling with) something new can often end up being exhilarating.
My wife is getting that by juggling … Ken maybe by hypnotizing at some point … and me? I’m wondering if anyone teaches yodeling around here.
I think it would be sort of neat to yodel my lungs out while climbing through the clouds the next time I decide to do a little wing-walking.
What do you think?
Contact Bill at [email protected]