I prepare myself as I flick the ball up into the air. On this nice sunny day I have decided that I will beat my juggling record. When I say "decided" I mean that I will take a soccer ball into my back yard and juggle until I beat the record, not knowing how long it will take or how tired I will be afterward. It is still the early morning (8:00) and the shadow of my house covers some of the yard, restoring the dew and crispness from the night. I will try to stay on the half of the lawn that is in the sun, which has dried out and will be less of a distraction of my juggling.
The soccer ball seems to hang in the air level with my knees, a good height juggling. Gravity pulls it back down and meets my foot and bounces in the same area that it just was. This takes less than a second to happen, but when I think about everything that happens when I juggle it once, it seems like a lot longer.
One two three four five six... I start to subconsciously count every time the ball makes the sound of hitting my foot. Though I learned to count at the same time as everybody (when I was a toddler), sometimes the automatic counter in my head glitches out. I find that when I am juggling and don't think about counting and I get to seventy, I either repeat sixty or go straight to eighty. I make a mental note to not do that this time.
Twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three... The ball continues to pop up right by my knees and come back down, only to pop back up again. When I juggle, I try to zone out and think about nothing, because when I think about something important I just stop juggling then and there and when I think about juggling I usually jinx myself.
Seventy seventy-one seventy-two seventy-three... I continue to juggle and take in the nice day. My record is somewhere in the late 200's, and I need to improve on that. I actually start to space out, and watch the bight vibrant ball spin repeatedly in the air.
I check my head counter: 158 159 160... I am getting close to 2000, and I get excited. Too excited. I start to think about the feeling of breaking my record and jinx myself. The ball bounces off my foot on a weird angle and flies away from me.
One two three...
I love this slice, Nate! It is very well written, great structure. I love how you end on the having to start over. You've also got some wonderful imagery here, the sounds of the ball, the dew and crispness of the night, the notes about counting in your head. Now I need to get my soccer ball back out a practice so I can beat my own juggling record :)
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