Here's a flashback to 1/24/01 on this site. I never aspired for one moment to make it my profession but when I was younger, I was quite interested in magic. Mark Wilson's TV show was the primary motivation and the gift I demanded and got one year — the gift that this story is about — was the other.
But this is only a partial encore. After the little divider line below, I have a few new paragraphs to add…
Let's talk about Sneaky Pete's Magic Show, a Remco toy that was among the favored Christmas/Hanukkah (we celebrated everything) gifts of my youth. I'm guessing I was eight the year I got mine and I loved it, though I can't recall ever using it to put on a show for anyone. It was just knowing how to do the tricks — knowing I could do them — that mattered, though I was never quite able to master the cups-and-balls. There was no gimmick to the cups-and-balls, apart from the fact that you actually had one more ball than an onlooker might think. The cups-and-balls required practice and dexterity and at that age, I was looking for more immediate gratification and easier answers to the mysteries of the world.
There was also the disappointment of the sawing-a-lady-in-half trick promised on the box and in the commercials. The set came with a little plastic harem girl, a rack on which you'd place her, and a special sword. The figure was made with some kind of internal wheel that allowed the sword to actually pass through the stomach seam without damaging the doll. It was surely the greatest feat of engineering managed by the Remco folks (the other tricks were pretty basic ones) but it was the least satisfying to me. It didn't relate to the way I saw Mark Wilson sawing women in half on his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, didn't show me how he bisected his wife/assistant, Nani Darnell. She didn't have one of those little wheels inside her.
Believe it or not, that's just about my most painful Christmas memory. I had it pretty good. I wish the same for you.
Okay, that was the divider line. Here's the new, 2017 add-on…
I'm not sure what year it was but when my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas/Hanukkah that year, I told them I wanted a Sneaky Pete Magic Set. A day or two later, my father went to a store and bought one and I think my mother gift-wrapped it one night after I went to bed. Then they hid it under their bed because there was still a week to go before whatever day they'd give it to me. We usually did not have presents on Hanukkah. I'd put on a yarmulke and light a candle on the menorah each night but that was about the extent of it. Presents were unwrapped the morning of December 25.
I knew (or course) they were getting me the gift I wanted. That was the kind of parents I had. I also knew every square inch of our house and thus all possible hiding places. It did not take me a whole lotta time to find the hidden gift and through the wrapping paper, I could make out enough of the box design to know it was what I craved. But it was December 18 or so. I was in agony, waiting for my opportunity to get my little hands on my big gift.
I was probably about seven or so at the time and I was a good-enough, smart-enough kid that my folks would occasionally leave me home alone while they went to the market or ran errands. The next second they did, I raced to where the present was. I had another toy in a box that was about the same size and shape as the Sneaky Pete Magic Set so with great care and a roll of Scotch Tape, I made a swap. I eased the magic set out of its wrapper and inserted the other toy and taped things up. Then I returned the gift to its hiding place, took the Sneaky Pete set to my room and had the time of my life with it.
I kept it hidden when they were around most of the time but whenever they left the house, I was in my room, mastering some (not all) of it. Or if they seemed busy in the living room, I might slide it out of its new hiding place, master a card trick or two, then put it back. I was a pretty honest kid most of the time but it somehow didn't feel wrong to engage in sneakiness and trickery about a Sneaky Pete Magic Set full of tricks.
There was one point of frustration, though. Once you learn a magic trick, you have to — simply have to — perform it for someone and fool them. It drove me a little nuts that I would have to wait until Christmas Day to do that.
The afternoon of December 24, my folks went somewhere and I seized on the opportunity to swap the toys back. I told my new Magic Set, "I'll see you tomorrow morning" and put it back into the package my mother had wrapped, which by now was among the presents under the Christmas tree in our living room. The next morn when I unwrapped it, I made a point of faking delightful surprise and also of tearing up the wrapping pretty good lest my mother examine it closely and notice the re-taping.
I needn't have bothered. She knew.
I don't know how she knew but she knew. Maybe when she took the gift out from under the bed to place it 'neath the tree, she noticed the surgery. Maybe I gave it away with the amount of time I spent in my room then with the door closed. Maybe it was my rotten acting when I opened the present or maybe it was because, ten minutes after I'd supposedly gotten my hands on it for the first time, I was performing tricks from it for them.
However she figured it out, she figured it out. I forget what my main gift was the following year but when she wrapped it, she put it immediately under the tree, told me what it was and asked that I not open it until Christmas morning.
As I'm sure I must have said at least a few times on this blog, I never could fool my mother. But we got along great because I don't think she could fool me, either. At least, I don't think she ever did. I'm pretty sure that wonderful man she called her husband was my father — so sure that I even grew up to look like him.
Okay, there's one more divider line and now I'll close with this: I wrote above about the Cut-the-Lady-In-Half trick that came in the magic set. Here's a video of it. And don't you just love that they put in the little head and feet pieces that prevent the lady from running away? Someone should bring this thing on Penn & Teller: Fool Us and see if they can figure out how it works…