Act 1. 'Feats of Strength'
It started with a wrestling match: me vs a 6 year old, a 4 year old, and a 3 year old. All at once. To the death. Well, not to the death, but when you've got 3 little boys sitting on your head, it sort of feels like death. The match ended when we all got in trouble for causing a ruckus.
Act 2. 'Hey I bet you can't do this weird and slightly disgusting body contortion!'
Double jointed fingers; touch your toes; twist up your fingers; the splits; lay on the floor on your back and put your knees on the floor beside your ears; put your big toe in your ear. What? I can do it, can't you?
Act 3. 'How'd you do that??'
First off, put your arms straight out in front of you, palms facing outwards. Cross your arms and link your fingers. Bring your linked fingers in towards your chin. Now, without uncrossing your fingers, put your pointer fingers on the sides of your nose. Uncross your arms without moving your fingers off your nose.
My dad's got this 'broken arm' trick he's been doing since I was a little kid. I've never in my life seen a child's eyes get so big - they were blown away!
Act 4. 'Remember when?'
When I was but a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child, and I could sit on the floor with my feet straight out in front of me, put my hands on the floor, lift myself up, and swing back and forth. It was a pretty cool trick, and all my older cousins would put in requests to see it on a regular basis. I can no longer pick my heals up off the ground; I blame it on the long legs, but the truth is that it's a lack of core muscles.
We thought it would be a great idea to teach all the little kids this amazing trick, but they didn't really grasp the concept. That's when the betting began! My Big Wheel cousin (who is 5 years older than me) bet his sister that HE could do it. Things were going well for him, it looked like he might just be successful, when there was an earsplitting scream of pain as his thigh cramped up! It was possibly the single-most funniest thing to ever happen at a Thanksgiving dinner. Until he did it again, twice.
Of course, this spurred on other guys to give it a try and the competition was on! This resulted in more screams of pain as more legs cramped up, and tears of laughter filled the room. My dad was the only one to do the trick with any success (and without hurting himself). He did it again the next day just to prove that it wasn't a fluke.
Now, my solitary goal in life is to come out of retirement and to be able to do this trick again. We'll see how that goes.
Act 5. 'Amusement with string'
It's really amazing what you can do with a single piece of string. Cat's Cradle, Jacob's Ladder, those are standards. I'm not sure where in the world my dad picked up all his tricks, but he can also pull a string through his fingers, to the amazement of all the under 5's in the room. And if you really want to entertain a kid for hours, just put a button on the string! Another cool string trick was performed by the 2 year old in the room: swinging it around her head, the yo-yo on the end of her string clunked the 3 year old in the head! Fun times had by all!
So that's pretty standard Armstrong Family gathering entertainment. We should really charge admission - we put on a pretty great show!
