Mom's Fallback Career with Archibald

Okay, we were walking down Stroget street in Copenhagen. Stroget is the street for shopping, sight seeing, people watching and street performers. If you go to Copenhagen, you will eventually end up on Stroget. Everyone does.

So we stop and watch a few performers, then there is this guy in a campaign hat and brown khaki shirt and pants running around like a crazy person, so we stopped to watch.

First the guy introduces himself as Archibald and asks for some help and grabs Brittany. As the family all knows, this produced a terrible conflict in her, because she is a performer and loves attention, but is very, very shy. But we encouraged her, and the guy was not to be dissuaded, so she went. He wanted her to help him with one trick, but she wouldn't, so he just popped her up on his shoulders and walked her around. Brittany was very brave, and we loved it. After it was over, I think she was glad she did it.

Look, no hands!

But then it really, really got funny. Archibald said, "For years, I've been searching for my mother." At that point, Mom later said she knew she was in trouble. Then he said, "At last I have found her!!!" And he grabbed Mom. Well, she was not conflicted at all, she is shy and does NOT want attention. Especially in front of a crowd on Stroget street. That's when I started laughing.

This is him pulling her out and introducing her as 'his mother.'

Then he gave her some spaghetti and had her hold it at arms length while he cut it in half with a whip. At first he just gave her the spaghetti and told her to hold it out - which made Mom pretty nervous - but then he had her wear an oven mitt to protect her hand - then we were all nervous. At this point, I couldn't breathe I was was laughing so hard. It went fine, the spaghetti was cut in half, no one was injured, Mom thought she was done and could relax. But noooo ....

Then he climbed up on his slack wire stand, and proceed to walk on it. At one point, he had Mom hand him unlit torches to juggle and his hat.

He made a mistake and dropped a burning torch. ("Mother, I dropped my torch, could you please?")

The performers take their bow, none the worse for wear. Mom was great, she laughed through the whole thing, despite the fact that she was totally mortified.

He really did have some skills, but without Mom & Brittany, the act was nothing.