Careening towards Christmas
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008As we careen towards Christmas the mind turns to gift giving. It is natural to think of what to give the single most important person in one’s life: oneself. I was looking at web sites for inspiration. Naturally, some of these websites sold magic stuff. And thus it was that I was reading the blurb on some trick or other and it slowly dawned on me, in a “hey! wait a minute!” moment - I already own this trick. So cleverly was the ad written, or so slowly does my brain work, that I did not recognise a trick for which I had actually paid good money (well, money).
Of course, the trick was one that I had bought, played with for a while before realising and accepting that I had no hope of pulling it off in a real - as opposed to an imaginary - life situation. I have quite a collection of such tricks. I will not name any of them for the same reason that I did not attempt them: to do so would risk more self humiliation than my delicate ego could bear.
Suffice it to say that most of these impossible-for-me tricks were described as being “easy”, “with no difficult sleights” or “for the beginner”, or some such. At any rate I was not brave enough to try any of them on actual people. I am coming to the conclusion that I am not cut out to be a magician. There are so many good magic practitioners around that the field is best left to them.