Kids Abhor a Vacuum

UPDATE:
I’ve modified the title to this post because it wasn’t obvious I was alluding to the saying “Nature abhors a vacumm,” which means that Nature tends to fill a need for something, somehow. So to with kids.

One of my more unusual talents is card magic. I learned a handful of pretty high quality illusions when I was in high school and I’ve retained the mechanics, if not the polish, ever since. These aren’t the mathematical variety of tricks where a selected card gets moved around enough to the point where it’s possible to locate the card. These are actual close-up illusions.

Most any kid is fascinated by magic, mostly because they’re still naive enough to believe it’s real. The boy and the lass belong in that category. I’ve done a number of my simpler illusions for them and they immediately want to know if I can make cards vanish and reappear and teleport and all that other stuff. Afterwards, they spend about 15 minutes repeating the what they’d seen me do, but obviously without the same results.

At which point they always ask me to teach them magic.

I’ve always declined them for a simple reason: once they learn the art of illusion, then the magic is gone. It sounds tedious, but even as an adult watching “magic” is entertained by the illusion, precisely because it seems like magic.

But once an understanding of the basic techniques are attained, the effect is gone. Instead, what is seen is the logical result of the techniques used that a layperson has no idea to look for. I’ll never forget shortly after learning some of the initial techniques watching a local magician perform a trick. I noticed something that no one in his audience did. Afterward, I went home and based on that one thing was able to completely reverse engineer the illusion.

Anyway, my point is I didn’t want to ruin magic for the boy and the lass at so young an age. Unfortunately, events have transpired that forced my hand a bit.

One of the boy’s classmates has been “teaching” him magic. I don’t know where this friend learned these tricks. The boy was then trying to duplicate whatever his friend had shown him. In the process, he was missing all of the little details that make a piece of magic believable. The Wife took me aside and pointed said “I know why you don’t want to teach him, but he wants to learn so badly that he’s getting stuff from another kid. You might want to teach him something so you can show him the right way to do this stuff.”

I realized, much to my chagrin, she was right. The boy had decided to fill his desire for knowledge from a different source. My denial of any knowledge was actually working to his detriment because he was learning all the wrong things about magic.

So I’ve now begun teaching him one trick. But I won’t allow him to use it on anyone until he can perform it well enough in front of me. That was the deal struck. If nothing else, at least I’ll get to see just how badly he wants to learn. So far, he’s practiced it a little everyday. He’s a little frustrated with my attention to detail, but I just keep telling him that he only gets one shot with a magic trick. If his audience detects the secret to the illusion, there is no second chance.

But even at his young age, it appears children will fulfill a need. With or without you. Best if it’s with you, says I.