Originally written on Christmas Eve seven years ago and posted on Inside Magic. We’ve republished it by request. Definitely not one of our “light” or “funny” pieces.
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Our father, Li’l Tom Hardy, was a proud man who frequently tried to pretend we were not too poor for Christmas presents.
Usually around December 13th, he’d come stumbling back to the trailer just as we were getting ready to head to the next town and announce,
“You know, I was talking with this Jehovah Witless Guy and he convinced me there is no biblical basis for celebrating Christmas.Now, while I don’t accept everything they those old boys say, ‘specially the no-drinking or smoking stuff, but I started thinking about it and I think they might be right.
I’d hate to see our whole family damned to Hell just to get a present under some pagan tree.”
“You know, I ran into that guy that used to be a ringmaster with Stamster Brothers and he commenced to talking about how Judaism – in its strictest form – really had the whole picture together.
They were waiting for the Messiah and that’s got a lot to say for it. I disagreed with him on the whole no-drinking and dragging out their equivalent of Christmas for a week or whatever, but the idea that we should really anticipate the birth of our Lord is a good thing.
Sooo, I’m thinking we anticipate how he can come into our life without the week of candles and presents.”
Or the worst was:
“You know, I was down at the Stop, Drop and Roll (that’s Circus Talk for a booze tent or trailer – usually just off the parade grounds), and I was walking back and saw this guy with a gun. He was mumbling something about how people demand so much from him and stuff and he was pretty well-bombed. I didn’t want to get too close cuz he was drunk and had a gun but I walked up a little closer and thought he looked like a biker.
There is a maxim we follow — and we don’t mean the magazine by the same name. Although it is possible that the magazine Maxim actually has written about our maxim. Of course, we would never know. We trusted and apparently our trust was foolishly tossed to the four winds – three of which came from the person we trusted.
In fact, the more we think about that lying little creep, the more we become perturbed. She said she was selling magazine subscriptions for her troop. We’re always looking to help out any scouting activities and while we normally associate cookie sales with troop fund raising, we trusted.
And we gave her good money to go with that trust. We mean we paid for the subscriptions with “real money”; not a charge on one of our almost certainly over-the-limit credit cards or even proceeds from a cash advance or payday (HA!) loan.
Our intention was to use real funds to purchase subscriptions the great journals of our era; and help the local troop raise money for something.
Well, we learned the hard way.
We have not received a single issue from any of the top quality magazines we ordered.
Not one.
We paid over $422.12 for the subscriptions and received nothing. No cards falling out of the pages and cutting one’s lap or landing in the toilet. No poster-size images of the featured models in faraway places with a “come hither” or, in our case, “don’t bother,” or “stay there-ith” look in their eyes.
Yes, we were foolish to trust. We should have been suspicious and cautious. Did we already mention she wasn’t wearing a scout uniform?
This is the stream of thought that went along with our writing of an article about a magic lecture from John Luka.
John Luka is the Head Muckety-Muck in our Pantheon of Magicians and so we were shocked to receive his invitation to learn the secrets of a certain magician’s act.
We knew it wasn’t a lecture by the magician in question – after all, what professional magician actually lectures on tricks he or she performs for a living.
We assumed, therefore, John Luka had crossed over to the Dark Side. Out of our respect for Mr. Luka, we immediately prepared to stick with him like glue or something equally sticky but preferably non-organic. We have no pride but at least we’re shiftless.
But wait, we read more of Mr. Luka’s email note to us and learned we were wrong. We were completely wrong. Mr. Luka hadn’t moved to the Dark Side. We wish we had read his entire email message before we reacted so quickly to abandon our principles and publish an expose of every magic trick we know.
To all of our brethren and cistern in magic, we apologize for exposing your secrets. We take some solace in thinking that our excited writing made the whole 982 page book unreadable or at least unwieldy. Plus, when we get nervous we revert to our first language.
Nonetheless, the book All of the Magic Secrets Ever is currently available on Amazon.Com. One reviewer noted:
Inside Magic’s home base is and has always been in beautiful Mystic Hollow, Michigan.
We are stone’s throw from several other hubs of performing arts, including Puppeton, Michigan (home of the Hand Puppet Capital of the World); Nodrop, Indiana (Home of the Ball Juggling Mecca); Meltmouth, Massachusetts (Fire Eating’s Home on this big blue marble); Bisect, Arizona (the Razor High Wire practitioners’ gathering spot); and Mushgrin, Iowa (The Royal Order of Her Majesty’s Mouth Catchers of Croquet Balls built the first non-UK facility there).
We are not on the payroll of any town mentioned. Indeed, there are some in each of the above hamlets who would prefer their special gathering place remain secret and thereby more special. Each of the towns offer a wonderful opportunity to meet and greet our fellow (and the feminine form of “fellow,” fella) performers in a non-threatening setting.
In modern society, it is considered gauche for one’s breath to smell of paraffin, in Meltmouth it is expected. “It is a strange character indeed,” wrote Chris Flagler in a 1937 edition of The Meltmouth Daily Telegraph, “to encounter a citizen of this town who sports not a single blister on their lips or tongue.” There are few brave enough to brush one’s teeth with anything other than a regulation toothbrush. In Mushgrin, Iowa, you will likely not find a single such dental tool in any shop up and down the High Road. In Mushgrin, most people use a cloth towel imbued with hydrogen peroxide to cleanse their crumpet hole.
So too is Mystic Hollow, Michigan. It is expected that everything will be something other than what it appears to be. A hat is not a hat but a home to birds, bunnies, or a bountiful bonanza of bandanas and bemusement. A coin on the floor will likely stay there because it is attached with a hidden nail; the police do not use handcuffs to restrain evil-doers (alleged) but a special elixir of Magician’s Wax and Velcro attached to the almost always oversized eyebrows of the malicious magi.
So what is our point?
We cannot judge others based on our own perception of what is normal.
Originally written on Christmas Eve seven years ago and posted on Inside Magic. We’ve republished it by request. Definitely not one of our “light” or “funny” pieces.
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