OddThinking

Last Saturday, I performed a magic trick in front of a crowd of about 75 jugglers at a juggling convention. Now, I am going to reveal to you the secret of this trick!

I have been involved in the Australian juggling community for well over a decade, and so I know a lot of jugglers. I was invited to be the Master of Ceremonies of an open stage night at a convention – this is a night that is largely targeted at jugglers performing skills for other jugglers in a supportive environment to try new skills. It was the perfect opportunity to try my newly-invented trick for the first time.

In its appearance, it was a pretty straightforward mentalist card trick.

First, I grabbed a volunteer from the audience who I had never met before. That was actually harder than it sounded! I had been introducing myself to everyone new at the convention all day and I knew all the old hands, so I had previously met almost every member of the audience.

Then, I was blindfolded. People don’t trust blindfolds not to be faked, so I invited the audience to provide materials for a blindfold, and had another performer securely fasten them around my eyes. That’s how I ended up with one guy’s trousers tied around my head, crotch firmly into my face, and one of Cassie’s socks tucked up in front of my nose.

Speaking into a headset microphone underneath the blindfold, I instructed the volunteer to shuffle a new deck of cards, deal out seven of them cards, select one of them and show it to the audience. She returned the cards into a line in front of me, and I waved my hands over the cards to draw in their psychic energy

Then I slowly touched them one by one…

After all the preparation I had done for this trick, the hard part was already over. All I had to do to find the right card was listen for the coughing…

During the day of the convention, I want over to chat to a stranger who standing alone on the side of the convention. His name was Bob* [* name changed], and he was visiting from a country town. He didn’t know many people there. I introduced myself, had a brief chat with Bob, and then said, conspiratorially while trying not to attract the attention of any onlookers, “Bob, I need a special favour from you, because I barely know you so no-one will suspect I am colluding with you. I am going to do a magic trick in the main show. I need you to be my stooge in the audience. When I touch the correct card, I need you to cough twice. I’ll hear the cough, and know it’s the right card. Don’t tell anyone else!”

Bob was more than pleased to be involved in the show, in a very special role. I moved on before anyone noticed our whispering.

Having a whole act depend on the reliability of one stranger is asking a bit much, so I moved on to a friend of mine, Alice* [* name changed]. I managed to get her to the side away from any eavesdroppers. “Alice, I need a special favour from you, because you’re someone I know I can trust.” I gave her the same instructions as Bob.

So far, what we have is a simple but rather clumsy piece of stage magic.

So, I didn’t stop there.

I spent a large part of the day, scouring the convention floor for opportunities, pulling friends and strangers aside individually, bringing them into my confidence, asking them to be my stooge. I am not sure how many people I gave these instructions to. I lost count around twenty. The final number was probably over thirty.

So, when I finally touched the right card blindfolded, on stage, about half the audience started coughing, and the whole audience was bewildered.

I got plenty of comments on this trick after the show; it seemed to go down well, and only one person suspected something was up before the show began. Many people had been worried about doing their part well. One guy actually started doing fake coughs during the previous act, to make it seem more natural!

There’s really only two downsides…

The first is that I will never be able to perform that trick again. I found myself making mental notes about how to carry it off better next time, and then chided myself. There will never be a next time.

The second is that I simultaneously “betrayed” dozens of friends and acquaintances in a single instant. I don’t think anyone trusts me any more. I spent the rest of the convention watching my back, worried that they would team up against me.