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Abra-Cadabbler — It’s Magic!
“Pick a card, any card.”
I went through a brief infatuation with magic as a pre-teenager. It’s a fairly common phase that mostly boys go through. Think I’m wrong? Name one prominent female magician and don’t use Zatanna, a fictional comic book superhero created in 1964 by an artist with a fetish for drawing women in fishnet stockings. [Fun fact: I lived across the street from that artist in the 1970s]
That chapter in my life ended rather abruptly one afternoon while I was following the explicit directions in an ancient book on card tricks. Determined to gain the dexterity of performers I’d seen on television, I was running and re-running a card sorting exercise and failing miserably.
“Why can’t I do this?” I muttered under my breath. One of the “professional tips” was to watch yourself in a mirror, instead of looking at your own hands. I decamped to the bathroom, and locked myself in for better concentration and fewer interruptions from my brothers.
After a few more attempts, the afternoon sun crested in through the bathroom window and blinded me. I looked at myself and saw that I was wasting my afternoon — alone, giving the impression to my family that I was doing something far dirtier or more intimate in a locked commode. I could spend years doing this and never get the dexterity and versatility needed to attempt…
