Ramsburg

DINNER WITH A SIDE OF… MAGIC?

by Bonnie Ramsburg

My parents decided to take my younger brother and I to a restaurant in our area called The Spaghetti Warehouse. My brother is six years younger than I am, and at this time mom believes he was still in single digits when we visited, (he’s now in his late thirties) just to give you an age frame. It was literally a warehouse in the middle of our downtown! You walked in the front doors and were bombarded with color, an overabundance of noise (warehouse, remember? High ceilings) and wonders that you couldn’t imagine, like an actual railroad car in the middle of the building that had tables inside so you could eat in it! Oh, and the delicious smell of Italian cooking of course, enough to make your mouth water as soon as you walked in. As we were sitting there perusing the menu, we saw a well-dressed man moving among the tables, stopping every so often, chatting with the customers at whichever table he stopped at and interacting the most with the children that were in the party. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, but we definitely heard the sounds of “Ohhhh! Ahhhhh!” and other sounds of wonder coming from those tables he stopped at. And it wasn’t just the kids either! My brother and I waited impatiently to see if our table would be one of the chosen and were extremely excited when it was! Turns out, the well-dressed man was a magician! He was going around to the tables and entertaining the guests with his magic act, choosing mostly tables with kids, but would sometimes go to an adults-only table. He was never at a table for more than five or ten minutes, and unfortunately, I don’t remember all of the magic he performed, but there was one trick that no one in my family can figure out! He did this trick twice, once for my brother, then once for me. It involved rabbits—not real ones, oh no, that would have really made a mess! He used sponge rabbits. After showing us the rabbits, and that there were exactly two, he stuck them in our hand, one on top of the other, told us to squeeze our hand tightly closed, said some magic words, and finished up by telling us to open our hand. Which we did, and to our ever wondering curiosity and delight, there was a multitude of baby sponge bunnies spilling out of our hand along with the “parents!” And like I said, he did this twice, and we still can’t figure out how it was done!

It’s a favorite memory from childhood. Some of the details probably aren’t correct because of the age and memory of the storyteller, but the magic trick is definitely true! Oh, and a word to the curious—learn from my mistake and never watch TV shows that explain how magic tricks are done; unless, of course, you want to learn how to become a magician. But if you want to retain your innocence and wonder at magic tricks and such, it’s a bad, bad idea to watch those kinds of shows.