June 3, 2006 - Saturday
The library hosted another magic show for kids this morning. Magic is a pretty safe bet for kids and this particularly magician, Peter Boie, seemed particularly adept at the usual slight of hand with scarves, squishy balls, and cards. He combined that skill with a couple of nice audience participation moments that smartly made the participant a hero instead of a dupe. For example, he palmed additional squishy balls into a little five-year-old girl's hand without her knowing it, did a little banter, and made it seem like the girl did the magic to make the extra balls. He did that a couple of times in a row with this girl, first making more balls, then turning four balls into one really big one. The little girl's expressions were a whole show in itself. Watching him work the entire scene and drag it out so well makes me think that he's just as curious as anyone to see what the kid will do. It probably changes with every kid.

He did another trick where he had two kids hold an empty brown paper bag out in front of them so he could "beam" a green scarf into it from across the room. No big trick, of course, because he clearly (although very adeptly) must have palmed another green scarf into it will he was closing it. But the banter was great. It was also a study in child behavior, including Harry's and Jeremy's. The gist of the banter was to suggest that the scarf would be traveling through the air in three parts, each very fast, and you had to have really good eyes to be able to see it. The first time he did it he excitedly asked the two kids if they saw it and one raised her, plus a few from the audience. The second time he got the other kid up front and most of the audience, including Harry, to claim to have seen it. By the third time, just about the whole audience, including many adults (most likely playing along, although that's just me guess), raised their hands claiming to have witnessed the "speed-of-light" particle transfer. Jeremy, however, did not raise his hand. He just sat there blinking like he does when he's being obstinate, as at dinner time in the face of pressure to eat a less than favorite food.

I asked Jeremy at bedtime why he didn't raise his hand.
"Because I didn't see it," was his straightforward response. There was no hesitation or embarrassment about it. I smiled and told him that it was a trick, that nobody really saw it and that the magician was just trying to get the other kids to raise their hands so they wouldn't be embarrassed. He got a big grin: of relief? of "damn-it-I-knew-it? of self-satisfaction? I don't know, but I told him that sometimes one of the hardest things to do is to believe in yourself when everyone else is saying, or in this case saying they're seeing, something else. I told him I was very proud of him. I suppose it could just be that he's only four and hasn't learned the subtlety of the half truth yet, but he's proving he's no sheep.


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