One-Handed Juggler, A Memoir: The Wild and Somewhat Uplifting Life of Dale Jones

By Dale Jones

Dale Jones, is the first one-handed juggler that history records (International Juggler's Association). He hurt his right-hand severely at age 8, becoming an instant lefty.

He endured 25 operations on his right-hand and arm, first to save it, and then to get as much use out of it as possible. Jones cannot even talk about the pain and misery he spent during those years. One operation so painful it has all but been abandoned. Writing about it, Jones says, "was one of the hardest things I've ever done." But, he knew he had to, to give his motivational story any real power.
"My story starts in absolute despair, but I went on to have a life many can only dream about."
It didn't come easy.

Jones found juggling at age 16, and it changed his life. He learned everything he could about juggling and practiced constantly. Jones even practiced at night until he fell asleep from exhaustion, often waking up on the floor the next morning with his juggling props around him.

He soon became so good juggling two balls in one-hand that he began competing and winning jobs over regular two-handed jugglers. It was there he hit his first real roadblock though.

People started asking him if he could juggle three balls. Not fast enough to juggle three in one-hand the normal way yet, Jones was determined to find another way.

Eventually, after what Jones would describe as "a study of failure" he developed a system that he calls the Bounce-Multiplex. It was such a success for him that he could not only juggle three balls, but do it with the ease of any two-handed juggler.

At that point, Jones had effectively evened the playing field with regular jugglers. He began getting some top entertainment jobs, even being hired by The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

He slowly adapted the Bounce-Multiplex for 4, 5 and even 6 balls. By this time, Jones had become one of the best jugglers in the world. Featured in "PEOPLE Magazine," in a front page article in "USA Today," and on too many national television shows to count.

Jones toured the nation performing for many, many years. His quick wit and astounding juggling often making him the most well-recieved entertainer anywhere he performed.

Jones has been asked to motivate others to overcome their problems (as he had overcome his disability), almost since as he started performing. He began to study the subject of motivation very seriously, in fact, and developed a program called: "Motivation in Motion."

Determination and perseverence, he feels, are the most powerful traits a person can have. The determination to absolutely learn everything you can about whatever you want to succeed in. To be so practiced that the seemingly impossible, becomes routine. To fail over and over again and persevere until success somehow, finally happens. Even if that success is actually just an unforeseen accident!

Indeed, Jones found that happy accidents, or serendipity, happened to him now and then, simply because he knew so much about his subjects of performing and juggling.

"Chance favors the prepared mind," Is not a quote by Jones though. It was said by the very father of vaccines, Louis Pasteur! In fact, Pasteur's first vaccine (for chicken Cholera), was an accident.

Jones tells audiences that if one knows everything there is to know about a subject, - if they've already "read the book," then all they have to do to succeed is write one more page. One more page, to do something that no one has ever done before! That's all it takes.

In this book, as in his life, Jones takes the reader through the process of failure to success. "Juggling is a study of that process. You fail over and over at each new trick, or every time you add another ball to juggle. But, you don't give up. You become determined and eventually persevere, getting so confident in your improvement you can finally add that failed trick to your act. That's how success works at anything, in fact."

Obviously, Jones knows what he's talking about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667879048

Book preview

My First Life

I was only right-handed for eight years and three months. It was such a small part of my life, but there are still some vivid memories from this period that stay with me. Like the time I made a harrowing escape from death.

I was six years old in the summer of 1962 and, in those days, my father took his vacation from selling furniture each August. The family would head to Daytona Beach and it was an annual trip that I absolutely loved. Little did I know, though, that year I would be lucky to make it through the trip alive.

Parenting was a tad different back then. People didn’t keep their kids as close and my mom and dad tended to be very relaxed about the chore. Relaxed enough that they took a mid-day nap with baby Dean, leaving my older brother Doug and I alone by the side of the outdoor hotel pool. Of course, we had strict instructions not to go in, because at ages 6 and 8, neither of us could swim.

Before going any further, let me explain a little about Doug. His sense of humor was always different from mine. Nothing made Douglas happier than stirring up some kind of trouble and then sitting back and watching as the pandemonium ensued. The look on his face when starting some of these incidents was classic. This I remember perfectly, because of how impressive his mischievous exploits turned out to be. I hold no ill will toward my brother for the events that occurred. We were kids after all, and as such, should have been held to a higher degree of both innocence and ignorance than an adult.

Doug, even from an early age, seemed to take great pleasure in scaring my parents to death. Case in point, he had once given me a grape to eat. Now, I’m not sure how old I was at the time, but not old enough to know that the name of the food I was eating was grape. I liked it and was chewing when my mother noticed and asked me what I was eating. Since I didn’t know, I did the logical thing and asked my brother.

Today, I would know by the grin on Doug’s face that he was lying, but back then I just repeated what my older sibling told me.

Aspirin.

What did you say? What are you eating?

Aspirin, I said again, this time with more conviction. Somewhat logically, my mother panicked.

She went to the bathroom and, by coincidence I guess (surely Doug was too young to plan this part!), found an empty bottle of aspirin by the sink. What followed was the increased panic and absolute terror you would expect. I don’t remember everything, and I like to think Douglas tried to confess that he had actually given me a grape at some point. But, he was little too. So it’s likely I would have ended up getting my stomach pumped no matter what.

Hopefully now you understand the character that was with me next to the pool, with no parents, or anyone else for that matter, around.

Bet you can’t make it across the pool to the other side, Doug challenged. I can’t truthfully quote him after all these years, but he said something along those lines.

As it happens, I had been thinking about what to do for days if I found myself in water over my head. My mind was probably working on it because playing in the waves at the beach can certainly throw a 6-year-old body around. Somehow, on one of our recent trips to the beach, I had gone too deep, considering a bigger wave was coming onto shore. I found myself totally out of control and pulled under. Maybe an undertow had grabbed me, but I didn’t know enough to be scared and simply held on for the ride. My body shot this way and that underwater, and I remember being surprised but unconcerned. The sea then suddenly decided to release me and shot me to the surface and forward, toward the shore, where I could stand up.

Mind you, I can’t be sure exactly what happened, and maybe the whole incident was in water I could stand up in. But, it didn’t feel like it to me. I had decided that I could have drowned and had actually thought of an emergency plan. My brother’s dare gave me a chance to try it out.

So I guess you could say I was about to create my own emergency. Stupid, I know, but I was 6! (I wasn’t known for my great thinking ability.) The pool wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small either and as we sat there, looking longwise from the shallow end to the deep end, I decided to try.

Now Douglas could have stopped me, right? But he had just turned 8 and who knows what he was thinking. Maybe that I was bluffing? At any rate, I got into the pool. My plan had nothing to do with swimming, since I couldn’t swim. I would walk across instead. At first, the trek would be easy, as I could walk with my head above water. Later, I resolved to simply push off the bottom, springing to the surface and grabbing air between steps.

To my credit, and pun intended, my plan started out swimmingly well. I was pretty proud of myself, thinking my bobbing up and down was absolutely genius. Even when complete hysteria began to ensue at greater depths, my early success gave me the resolve to stick with my plan. As you’d expect, soon gravity wasn’t enough to take me down to the bottom for my feet to spring me back up to the surface and breathe. Each step became less effective as the depth increased and, knowing I was in trouble, I panicked!

I began flapping my arms wildly upward to push myself down to the bottom for my spring back to the surface. How I knew to do this, I don’t know! It could have been (and probably was) a combination of luck, and trial and error.

My contact with the bottom was becoming way less solid, no matter what I did. Breaths of air were becoming seldom.

What was going on with Douglas at the side of the pool? I didn’t know. To this day, I don’t know. But he likely couldn’t have helped me at this point. There was nobody around and the fact is, I was too focused to care.

The water kept getting deeper, and I knew I was closer to that end of the pool. That turning around (even if I could figure out how to do it) and heading back the way I had come would be a mistake. So, I kept going. There was one point after I made that decision in which I struggled terribly to reach the surface and thought there was no way I would.

Of course, since you’re reading this, you know I did. Not only that, but despite my hysteria, my mind was still learning as I went. My frantic strokes pushing me both up and down got stronger and more controlled. Necessity (to live) was the mother of invention!

So, about the third time I surfaced in the deepest water, I realized I would make it.

Still, I remember being very temped to lunge for the side of the pool and grab onto the tile ledge, before I was really close enough to grab it. I didn’t though. I wanted to end this nightmare, but not by possibly drowning. So, I went down one more time.

The bottom curved up a little so close to the end, and that came as welcome relief. When I surfaced for the last time, I was only inches from the edge and grabbed on. I climbed out of that torture chamber and collected myself while Doug took off for our hotel room to tattle on me. Just great!

My father taught us to swim over the next few hours.

I would stay right-handed for two more years, before my life changed forever.

Jones Family Photo

Seated: Rita and Delbert, Sr.

Children from clockwise: Delbert, Jr., Doug, Dean, and Dale

Becoming a Lefty

I was eight years old when Douglas and I were switched to a public school from a Catholic one. This is important to note because, in 1964, my family lived in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of University City, Missouri. As coincidence would have it, I may not have hurt my right arm and hand at all if I had stayed at Christ the King Catholic School.

It was the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur when I met my first femme fatale, Linda Seiferth. (Okay, actually, she was just really cute. She had none of the bad qualities of a femme fatale. But I couldn’t resist calling her that. It just sounded so dramatic.) Because of Yom Kippur, Jackson Park Elementary had only a smattering of kids playing at recess, instead of the usual throngs. Even my best friend, Steven, was absent, celebrating the holiday. So I was looking for something to do.

That something turned out to be getting the attention of the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I was absolutely drawn to her while she played on the monkey bars I had already been approaching. I ran right over.

I don’t have any idea (and neither does she) when I learned her name was Linda, but I doubt it was that day. Why? Because girls had cooties, and you weren’t supposed to talk to them, that’s why. Regardless, I somehow began playing with her and we were laughing and having fun until some of my classmates noticed.

Dale, get away from her. Girls have cooties! somebody shouted.

It’s hard liking girls before you are supposed to. But I wasn’t willing to give up my status as a normal third-grade boy (in public anyway). So, on the monkey bars with Linda, I reluctantly began a hand by hand trek away from the object of my affection.

She’s coming after you Dale, hurry! This was only one of many warnings I began hearing by my (now very concerned) male classmates, as I swung from bar to bar. The warnings kept coming, and I became convinced the little enchantress was right behind me, no matter how fast I went. Quickly, I made a turn to where the climbing rungs of the monkey bars became wider apart and grabbed them faster still. I know today that this is where I lost her, but I certainly didn’t know it then.

Everyone was marveling at my speed and my classmates simply wanted to see me continue the wild ride. So, they continued egging me on. I had only one more wide rung before the safety of a ladder landing when my hand slipped from the rung and I fell.

But allow me to defend myself here. That wild ride was not dangerous at all in my mind. There was no fear of getting hurt on those monkey bars, because a thick rubber mat covered the asphalt underneath them. I had fallen from them many times before without so much as a bruise. Unfortunately, this time I fell wrong.

It was a freak accident. It wasn’t supposed to happen on that safe playground equipment, but it did. I fell onto my right arm and hand. I was one rung from the lowest hand holds of the monkey bars, but the low height didn’t matter. It was a painful, terrible, life-changing event for me. I would not recover for many years.

Picking myself up off that mat, I was obviously hurt and in pain. I surveyed the damage and my right arm was a mangled mess. It wasn’t shaped right anymore. I remember being morbidly curious about my (now) oddly shaped arm, so I lifted it to my shoulder to get a better view. Though my classmates would later say they were awestruck that I knew for a fact my arm was broken, to me it was the most obvious thing going on in the world that day. I began calling for help from the teachers meant to be watching us.

Help, I broke my arm! I screamed. Several teachers rushed over in growing concern and quickly began pushing me towards the nurse’s office.

But, even in my agony, that girl had left such an impression on me that I looked back to see where she was. Up at the very highest point of the monkey bars, Linda was sitting on a rung and watching intently. Our eyes met for an instant that would be frozen in time for both of us. We wouldn’t see each other’s faces again for some thirty years. But when we did, it was like walking into a time-warp.

Looking back now, my accident led to an incredibly improbable, but wonderful life and I wouldn’t change a thing. On the other hand (my good left one) I would never, ever want to go back and relive the