One Sunday night when I was twelve my uncle showed me a card trick that changed my life.
Fanning the deck out on the kitchen table he instructed me to pick out one card and turn it face up so that everyone in the room could see it. To this day I still remember that card: The 5 of Clubs.
Then my uncle did something completely unexpected. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number and asked to speak to Mr. Wizard. After a moment he handed me the the phone.
"Ask the Wizard what card you picked," Uncle Tony instructed.
If I'd been a little older at the time and already cynical, I would have no doubt suspected that my uncle---a notorious funster and practical joker---had prepared a suitably elaborate stunt of which I was to serve as the butt-end, and so thinking I would have naturally adopted a bored and disinterested tone of voice that so that later I could claim I'd never really been 'taken in'. But in those days kids of twelve were still young enough to be credelous and naive and open to magic, and I can even now recall a tingle of anticipation as I took up the phone and innocently inquired,
"What card did I pick, Mr. Wizard?"
A lugubrious voice answered, "5 of Clubs," then disconnected.
I was flabbergasted. How could such a thing be possible?
"Once you know how a trick is done," my uncle cautioned me, "it's magic is all gone."
But after much pleading and cajoling and outright begging on my part, my uncle finally agreed that if I came to his house the following Thursday night he'd reveal Mr. Wizard's secret to me. While I waited impatiently for Thursday to roll around, I ran the trick over and over in my head, and even before my uncle's revelation I pretty much figured out how it was worked: it was based on a simple word code, and those so inclined can look it up in a dozen magic books. After a half-hour's practice with my uncle I was confident enough to go out and perform the trick for my friends, who were all equally as astounded as I was. And in this way I was set off on a mission that would obsess me all that summer.
I went down to the Grand Book Center where they sold used paperbacks for ten or fifteen cents and bought up every book on card magic I could find. Then I raided the shelves of the public library and came home with another armful. I taught myself dozens of basic mathematical formula tricks, but not content with these, I spent hours working in front of the bathroom mirror until I could (with tolerable proficiency) palm a card, create a break in the deck, perform a double and triple lift, shuffle without and shuffling and deal off the bottom of the pack. Contrary to my uncle's warning, the more I learned the more I wanted to learn, the more magical it all seemed. I had no interest in card games at all, but was never without a deck of cards. I read biographies of Houdini, Dunninger, and Carter the Great. Before long I had amassed a small personal library that spilled over onto the floor of the room I had the misfortune of sharing with my older brother.
"How many of those stupid books do you need?" Jack sneered.
One trick I would have loved to pull off would have been to make my brother disappear---permanently. But that wasn't in any of the books I read. So instead I kept my focus on magic and eventually I put together a small repertoire of tricks with which I astounded (maybe bored) anyone I could corral for ten minutes at a time. With practice, I became bolder.
It happened that there was a girl in our neighborhood named Roseanne Kessler, a cherubic-faced early-developer who seemed to fill out her blouses long before any of the other girls did. Just being in her presence caused me to feel thick and clumsy and tight inside. As I was completely lacking in all social and romantic skills, I decided to woo her with my most elaborate and (so I thought) astounding effect.
"Pick a card," I instructed her, "and turn it face up." The King of Diamonds.
Then I had her insert the card back in the deck, shuffle and re-shuffle to her heart's content, then fan the cards out on the stoop again only to find her her card had mysteriously gone missing from the pack.
Then the Coup-de-Grace: from behind my back I produced a hardboiled egg and instructed her to roll it back and forth on the stoop. When the shell fell away the words "King of Diamonds" were clear and legible (in black ink) on the surface of the egg.
It had taken several hours to set up the trick, and for my thanks I received a blank stare, followed by the only two words Roseanne Kessler ever spoke to me: "You're weird."
But notwithstanding Roseanne and my brother, my magical summer continued apace. Toward the beginning of September a movie house in Manhattan began showing a revival of "Houdini" starring Tony Curtis, Every day for a week I took the subway from Brooklyn and sat each time through two showings. Never had I been so mesmerized by a movie in my life. By the end, when Houdini's Upside Down Water Torture Tank trick goes horribly awry and he expires onstage after promising his wife Bess that, "If there's a way...I'll be back," I was awash in tears. I felt the movie was speaking directly to me. And there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that I would someday join the ranks of the legendary stage magicians.
Of course, I never did. In fact, by the following summer I had almost completely lost all interest in my tricks. I'm not sure I can say exactly why. Except that the next year I was thirteen, and the year after that fourteen, and as usually happens with boys entering into adolescence, my attention wandered to other things. I lost my focus and eventually magic drifted out of my life for good.
Nowadays my fingers are thick, my timing is shot, and I wouldn't dare to try even the simplest effect. So it goes: we have it, and we throw it away.
And yet, in later years, on the most boring, rotten, paper-thin days of my life, I might riffle through a deck of cards just to be doing something, and if I should happen to light upon the 5 of Clubs I get a sudden surge of joy and enthusiasm. I may not know what to do with it anymore, but I know exactly what it is. Childhood summers are like that, they best ones anyway. You carry them around with you all your life, even if you only stumble on them in the dark once every few years or so.
Thank you, Mr. Wizard. Thank you, Uncle Tony.
Fanning the deck out on the kitchen table he instructed me to pick out one card and turn it face up so that everyone in the room could see it. To this day I still remember that card: The 5 of Clubs.
Then my uncle did something completely unexpected. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number and asked to speak to Mr. Wizard. After a moment he handed me the the phone.
"Ask the Wizard what card you picked," Uncle Tony instructed.
If I'd been a little older at the time and already cynical, I would have no doubt suspected that my uncle---a notorious funster and practical joker---had prepared a suitably elaborate stunt of which I was to serve as the butt-end, and so thinking I would have naturally adopted a bored and disinterested tone of voice that so that later I could claim I'd never really been 'taken in'. But in those days kids of twelve were still young enough to be credelous and naive and open to magic, and I can even now recall a tingle of anticipation as I took up the phone and innocently inquired,
"What card did I pick, Mr. Wizard?"
A lugubrious voice answered, "5 of Clubs," then disconnected.
I was flabbergasted. How could such a thing be possible?
"Once you know how a trick is done," my uncle cautioned me, "it's magic is all gone."
But after much pleading and cajoling and outright begging on my part, my uncle finally agreed that if I came to his house the following Thursday night he'd reveal Mr. Wizard's secret to me. While I waited impatiently for Thursday to roll around, I ran the trick over and over in my head, and even before my uncle's revelation I pretty much figured out how it was worked: it was based on a simple word code, and those so inclined can look it up in a dozen magic books. After a half-hour's practice with my uncle I was confident enough to go out and perform the trick for my friends, who were all equally as astounded as I was. And in this way I was set off on a mission that would obsess me all that summer.
I went down to the Grand Book Center where they sold used paperbacks for ten or fifteen cents and bought up every book on card magic I could find. Then I raided the shelves of the public library and came home with another armful. I taught myself dozens of basic mathematical formula tricks, but not content with these, I spent hours working in front of the bathroom mirror until I could (with tolerable proficiency) palm a card, create a break in the deck, perform a double and triple lift, shuffle without and shuffling and deal off the bottom of the pack. Contrary to my uncle's warning, the more I learned the more I wanted to learn, the more magical it all seemed. I had no interest in card games at all, but was never without a deck of cards. I read biographies of Houdini, Dunninger, and Carter the Great. Before long I had amassed a small personal library that spilled over onto the floor of the room I had the misfortune of sharing with my older brother.
"How many of those stupid books do you need?" Jack sneered.
One trick I would have loved to pull off would have been to make my brother disappear---permanently. But that wasn't in any of the books I read. So instead I kept my focus on magic and eventually I put together a small repertoire of tricks with which I astounded (maybe bored) anyone I could corral for ten minutes at a time. With practice, I became bolder.
It happened that there was a girl in our neighborhood named Roseanne Kessler, a cherubic-faced early-developer who seemed to fill out her blouses long before any of the other girls did. Just being in her presence caused me to feel thick and clumsy and tight inside. As I was completely lacking in all social and romantic skills, I decided to woo her with my most elaborate and (so I thought) astounding effect.
"Pick a card," I instructed her, "and turn it face up." The King of Diamonds.
Then I had her insert the card back in the deck, shuffle and re-shuffle to her heart's content, then fan the cards out on the stoop again only to find her her card had mysteriously gone missing from the pack.
Then the Coup-de-Grace: from behind my back I produced a hardboiled egg and instructed her to roll it back and forth on the stoop. When the shell fell away the words "King of Diamonds" were clear and legible (in black ink) on the surface of the egg.
It had taken several hours to set up the trick, and for my thanks I received a blank stare, followed by the only two words Roseanne Kessler ever spoke to me: "You're weird."
But notwithstanding Roseanne and my brother, my magical summer continued apace. Toward the beginning of September a movie house in Manhattan began showing a revival of "Houdini" starring Tony Curtis, Every day for a week I took the subway from Brooklyn and sat each time through two showings. Never had I been so mesmerized by a movie in my life. By the end, when Houdini's Upside Down Water Torture Tank trick goes horribly awry and he expires onstage after promising his wife Bess that, "If there's a way...I'll be back," I was awash in tears. I felt the movie was speaking directly to me. And there was not the slightest doubt in my mind that I would someday join the ranks of the legendary stage magicians.
Of course, I never did. In fact, by the following summer I had almost completely lost all interest in my tricks. I'm not sure I can say exactly why. Except that the next year I was thirteen, and the year after that fourteen, and as usually happens with boys entering into adolescence, my attention wandered to other things. I lost my focus and eventually magic drifted out of my life for good.
Nowadays my fingers are thick, my timing is shot, and I wouldn't dare to try even the simplest effect. So it goes: we have it, and we throw it away.
And yet, in later years, on the most boring, rotten, paper-thin days of my life, I might riffle through a deck of cards just to be doing something, and if I should happen to light upon the 5 of Clubs I get a sudden surge of joy and enthusiasm. I may not know what to do with it anymore, but I know exactly what it is. Childhood summers are like that, they best ones anyway. You carry them around with you all your life, even if you only stumble on them in the dark once every few years or so.
Thank you, Mr. Wizard. Thank you, Uncle Tony.
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