Dec. 1: Things I learned from kids

 For my inaugural December post this year, I suppose I could write a lengthy and profound essay on the wisdom I have garnered through interacting with children, mine in particular.

But who's got time for that nowadays?

Yes, I learn a lot of important life-altering stuff from the kiddie corps, but I learn a lot of useless stuff too. Unlike teachers, I am not surrounded by kids most days. But when I go into a school to do a day's worth of magic shows - something I do about 50 times a year - I know I'm going to learn a lot about the day-to-day lives of kindergarten students.

Here is an example:

That is a picture of an egg bag, a magic trick that magicians have been performing for well over a century. The premise is that you put an egg in the bag, you make the egg disappear, and then you make the egg come back again. I know that the premise sounds pretty lame but that's just fine. It is the job of a magician to get his audience emotionally invested in that egg. Then the trick has legs.

I have about five different presentations for the egg bag, but the one I use for kindergarten students is what I call the I HATE HALLOWEEN presentation. The premise is that as a child, I hated Halloween because my family lived out in the country and there was only one house near us where we could go trick or treating. Further, the people who owned this house were egg farmers. so instead of dispensing candy, they gave out eggs.* This made me hate Halloween. As a budding young magician, I would take the egg up to my room and make it disappear.

Here then is a transcript of me performing the egg bag for a class full of kindergarten students.

Shteevie: When I was in kindergarten, I hated Halloween...

Kid one: I like Halloween. I dressed up as a ladybug.

Kid two: Christmas is my favourite holiday.

Kid three: We don't celebrate Christmas. We celebrate Hannukah.

Shteevie: That's just great. Anyway, when I went to my neighbour's house and said trick or treat, they gave me an egg.

Kid four: I don't like eggs. Neither does my mom. She's vegan.

Kid five: My dad does. He likes scrambled eggs.

Kid six: My dad only eats brown eggs.

Shteevie: So we put the egg in the bag...

Kid seven: That's not a real egg.

Shteevie: You're right. It's not a real egg. It's a wooden egg. It goes with my wooden head.

Kid eight: My dad has a woodshop in the garage.

Kid nine: My dad's a plumber.

Kid ten: My dad's a teacher but he teaches at a different school.

Shteevie: And now the egg disappears.

Kid eleven: I saw a magician at the mall and he made a bunny disappear?

Kid twelve: Do you have a bunny?

Shteevie: I do not have a bunny.

Entire class of kindergarten kids: *Disappointed sigh.*

So you see what I mean? I learn a lot from kids. I learned that some kids are Jewish, some kids are vegans, some kids have dads who are plumbers, and that all kids like bunny rabbits.

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* This story is not factual at all. In fact, we lived in suburbia and had plenty of houses from which to extort treats.