I was once congratulated for performing a magic trick I never actually did.
At a school leavers’ ball about ten years ago, I gave the headmaster two guitar plectrums, one yellow and one black, to hold in his closed fists.
I gently held his wrists, gave them a little wave before proudly announcing:
“The plectrums have now changed places!”
He opened his hands. They had not.
“Ah, yes. They changed places… but then they changed back again.”
My joke, unworthy of the lowest rung on the comedy ladder, had given me just enough opportunity to steal off his watch and pop it on my own wrist.
I revealed this theft, handed back the watch, secured my validation then got the hell out of there.
The next morning, the client emailed:
“Everyone is still talking about your magic. Our headmaster still can’t explain how you made the plectrums change places in his hands!”
I wasn’t surprised he couldn’t explain it. It never happened.
But who was I to correct him? He’d given me the perfect trick: one that required no method whatsoever.
Somewhere between the performance and the next morning, the story had become more magical than the event.
This happens surprisingly often to magicians, and it’s something we all do every day of our lives.
We fill in the gaps, decide what an experience has meant and then remember our interpretation as though it were the event itself.
And we’re particularly good at making that story about ourselves.
“The room went quiet because I’d said something stupid.”
“They looked at their phone because I was boring them.”
“The conversation felt awkward because I’d made it awkward.”
These conclusions may have started with real experiences, but they might deserve another look.
I like to think the headmaster’s head is still mangled. Perhaps he’s considered heat-sensitive paint. Or unfathomable sleight of hand.
But he is unlikely to have considered the true answer: It happened entirely in his imagination.
