Call it a magic trick if you want, but it isn’t. Not really. A magic trick needs magic to make it happen, but I can do my trick without needing magical powers.
But then — after the trick is over — that’s when the magic happens.
I don’t remember when or where I learned how to turn a paper napkin into a long-stemmed rose with a single delicate leaf halfway up its stem, but I’ve been doing it for years to release the magic whenever it seemed that a little magic was called for. Like the time my wife and I watched the young father at Arby’s trying to corral his restless brood of three young kids who fussed and fidgeted. The youngest daughter, a little toddler of two or three, started to whimper.
My wife and I were sitting right next to them, and when I caught the little girl’s eye, I smiled and held up a napkin for her to see. Her sobbing stopped as she stared at my hands, where the napkin was turning into a rose, step by step.
I caught the father’s eye when he turned to see why his little girl had stopped crying, and I nodded toward the toddler in a silent gesture that asked, “Is it OK if I give it to her?”
He nodded, and when I handed it to the little girl she stared at me, big-eyed and silent, as she twirled the paper flower in her fingers. The other kids had fallen silent, too, watching the whole event take place, so my wife poked me in the arm as if to say, “Well, what about them?” I made two more roses — taking my time with them this time around, because the father seemed to be enjoying the calm of their rapt undivided attention to the trick. Fathers need magic, too.
Or take that time at the supper club on the shores of Lake Kabetogama in northern Minnesota, where the serving girl was getting frazzled. The crowd was big because they had a band that night, and she was exhausted running from the kitchen to the bar and back again to the dining room, trying to keep up with food and drink orders.
(Photo provided)
As she whirled past on one of her trips to the bar, I held my hand up. She stopped, thinking I wanted to order something, but she smiled when she saw that I held a paper rose in my hand for her to take.
A few minutes later, she breezed past again with a tray full of drinks, and she set a fresh draft beer down next to my half-empty glass.
“Oh, I didn’t order this,” I said.
“On the house,” she said. “The two other girls at the bar were jealous when they saw my flower.” And she dashed off to take care of other patrons.
As she swept by again, I handed her two more paper roses to take to the girls at the bar.
I didn’t pay for another beer all night. Magic.
It’s been like that wherever I go and a little magic seems in order.
A magician never reveals the secrets of his magic tricks, but as I said, my paper rose isn’t a magic trick — it’s a simple trick that creates magic once it’s finished. That’s why I freely teach the trick to anybody who feels the need to spread a little magic around.
My nephew Billy needed a little magic some years ago when he was in high school. He was getting ready to take a girl to prom, and he moaned to me that everything was turning out to be way too costly. “We’re going with several other couples,” he said, “and all the other guys are buying expensive bouquets of flowers for their dates. But I’m tapped out. I don’t know what to do.”
I went to the kitchen, came back with a handful of napkins, and started teaching him how to make long-stem paper roses with a single fragile leaf halfway up the stem.
He seemed doubtful, but desperate.
“You might be surprised at how much magic these little flowers have in them,” I told him. “Anyway, look at it this way. If you give her a dozen paper roses instead of real ones, at least you’ll learn from her reaction whether she’s the kind of girl you want to spend any more time or money on.”
He smiled and said he’d give it a try.
I saw Billy a couple weeks later and asked him how his prom went.
“I made two dozen paper roses,” he said, “and I used three or four different color napkins to make them. I sprayed a little of my Mom’s perfume on them to make them smell like flowers.”
“And did your date like them?”
“She loved them!” he said. “All the other girls said ‘Aw-w-w-w,’ when I gave them to her. And then they said to their boyfriends, ‘Why don’t you ever do anything thoughtful and romantic like that for me?’ So now all the guys are mad at me for making them look bad when all they did for their dates was show up with expensive store-bought flowers.”
Now, tell me that isn’t some powerful magic!
1 Comment
This is all great, now when are you going to show us how to make the roses?