Several months ago I wrote about a juggler on our street who juggles fruit found along the sidewalk. He brightens each day that my grandson and I come across him on our walk home from preschool. 

Lately, he’s had some competition. There’s a new juggler who shows up with props and an act that far eclipses the less polished one of our fruit juggler. 

The first time we saw him he was juggling five fancy balls while on roller skates.

The second time he was juggling the balls from a unicycle while balancing a glass of water on his head. 

The third time he was juggling from the top of a ball that sat on the top rung of a step ladder while keeping a beach ball in the air with a straw that he held in his mouth.

We drove home yesterday and missed his act, but saw him holding three hula hoops as we passed.  

There seems to be a fairly low level of competition on the street corners. Windshield washers help each other finish jobs when it looks like the light is about to change. Candy sellers never seem to mind that they’re following someone who has a basket filled with nearly identical candies. And no one seems to be jockeying for prime spots or to be first at the cars with open windows.  

It makes me hope that there’s room for more than one juggler on our corner. Because as much as I enjoy watching the new guy and seeing what he comes up with next, it’s the first juggler, with his three pieces of fruit and an imperfect cartwheel at the end, that makes me smile.

He’s the one that reminds me that we all have something to contribute. That we can’t all write like James Joyce, sing like Adele, paint like Hopper, or juggle while riding a unicycle. 

But we can all do something that brightens the day of someone else.  

It’s often as simple as picking up a few pieces of fruit from the sidewalk.