I really don't know the right place to post this. It fits under stories, and yet it deals with street magic, and impromptu magic, so it might be correct in those other categories too.

So anyway, the moderators will have to decide.

But it is a story about what makes me absolutely fullfilled in my heart.

It began today, when I took my wife to get her hair done. I was standing outside the beauty parlor, on the sidewalk, and a couple young boys were walking by,when they hit me with the question: "Do you do magic?"

Well, they asked the magic question, and SO... you can guess. Before you know it, there I am on the sidewalk, doing magic out of my pockets, wowing them, and beginning to draw a crowd. (You see, I told you iot might go under the street magic section of the forum)

Anyway, I wasn't as fully prepared as I normally am, but I had a few dollar bills on me, and some change, and LUCKILY, and happily for me, I had just received my Newton's Nightmare, and it was in my van.

So, with that in mind, I performed "ladybugged", using a normal sponge ball routine that I adapted for it, and I did "Dining on Dollars", and besides the Newtons Nightmare, I did some Sankey Stuff, Boris Wild's "Very Wild", and I was fortunate to find two cans of soda pop handy, so I did Paul Harris's "Fizzmaster" right there on the sidewalk! What a mess! But they loved it!

So the boys ran to get there parents, and before I knew it, I had a group of adults around me besides the kids.

It turned into a magic fest! But the crowning achievement was a little boy who walked out of the store with his mom, about five or six years old. He wanted to see the magic, so I did "lady bugged", and folks, I wanna tell you, if ever I saw wonder in my whole life, I saw it on the face of that little boy. I mean to tell you, his jaw literally DROPPED, and he looked like a little fish with his mouth opened wide like that. His eyes got WIDE as saucers, and he would say "WHOA!!!" Then he would break into a wide grin! It touched my heart in a very deep spot. It was just precious, and Doug Henning would have been surely proud! He was FEELING the wonder, literally!

All of them went away laughing and happy, gleeful, and they went away with a dollar bill pre folded to do Dan Harlan's "Presedential Expression"


(Yeah, they wanted me to teach them some magic, and that is about all I could think of at the time.)

Anyway, I did not get paid for that performance, but I DID. I got payed with joy and smiles and wonder created in some young children's hearts.

And they all went away saying "I want to be a magician!"

So, perhaps. in my own way, and in ways that I will never even realize until eternity, I have helped shape some futures. Perhaps, just perhaps, the same thing will happen in their heart that happened in mine when I was a little boy of five years old, watching Mark Wilson on my black and white TV set, in his "Magical Land Of Alakazam, being filled with wonder, saying "I want to be a magician!"

Close to fourty some odd years later, and hear I am, with the dream intact, with magic in my blood, and never being able to shake it. (I don't want to!)

As he shaped my destiny, so I feel I have shaped the destiny of some other young lives, and even better, perhaps because of that, some kids will now spend their allowance on magic tricks, and not on DRUGS.

Perhaps when their friends are out causing trouble, they will be in their room, with a deck of cards, or some coins or rope, or who knows. The next david Copperfield? Anything is possible.

And perhaps, who knows, maybe a few years down the road, one of those kids will click on the internet and find a little place called the Magic Café.......




Share the wonder, fellas.

YEAH!!!!

(Austin Powers voice): YEAH, BABY!!

Very cool Doug.

Only the coolest, my man!

A true bottom-line moment for this crazy art/craft/science we call magic.

Thanks.