The Yellow Bandanna

When I was about 6 or 7, I saw this magic show at a dinky kiddy theme park that I absolutely loved. About halfway through the show, the magician pulled out this correspondence course envelope and announces that he will be learning how to perform...

The Yellow Bandanna!!! *cue fake applause and puppet yays*

The gimmick of the trick is that supposedly, the magician gets this really cool new magic trick kit in the mail with taped instructions, but instead of including the yellow bandanna, a yellow banana is included instead. The trick is turning the banana into the bandanna and making it all disappear. Overall, it's an extremely cheesy trick with lots of visual gags, and the taped instructions mean that the performer doesn't have to think up much of a patter.

Most people just saw a kinda stupid disappearing trick with a dumb pun as the premise. I took away something the magician probably didn't intend.

The fake instruction tape used in that trick "teaches" the performer about palming - using your hand (your palm) to conceal small objects. It's one of the most basic moves a magician ever learns, and is used in everything from massive stage magic to up-close sponge ball tricks. Despite the relative simplicity of the premise, it's difficult to learn how to pull off correctly because the real trick of palming something is not in hiding coins (or folded bananas) in your hand, it's the misdirection that keeps the audience form knowing that the thing was ever there.

For whatever reason, this trick stuck with me after we got home. I'd sit in my room practicing palming and revealing quarters and pennies. Then I got brave.

My house has always had a pretty strict one-candy/cookie/desserty thing-only-after-you've-finished-dinner rule. Most of the time me and my siblings would draw from large Tupperware buckets of leftover Halloween candy, trying to discover that one last Reese's cup months after the holiday. One day, after asking permission to get my "bucket treat", I decided that I would try to sneak an extra piece of candy. I picked up and displayed a Three Musketeers bar (almost as good as a Reese's), and got the okay from my parents. While putting the lid back on my bucket, I slipped an extra Snickers bar out, palmed it as I walked back to my seat, ate my Three Musketeers bar, and asked to be excused. I took the Snickers bar out of my lap, palmed it in a fist that to me was obviously too tight, and hurried up to my room.

The extra candy bar was sweet with adrenaline-fueled goodness.

I hid the wrapper under some other trash, and thus began my prolific years-long career of petty larceny of candy and cookies. I now think my parents were aware of some of it (at the very least, I'm sure they had their suspicions) but I never got called out.

That was the first time that I started to break the walls of the panopticon and see that I was not always being watched - in fact, that most of the time, people don't notice what they aren't looking for. Over time, I used that knowledge and an expanding awareness of what people actually pay attention to to get away with doing basically what I wanted most of the time. I still do, to some extent (my friends will tell you I am a fantastic cheat at Munchkin). I've learned what I can get away with, and sometimes, it seems like I get away with way more than I should be able to.

Does this make me a bad person? I don't think so. I have definitely picked up some bad habits - it's way too easy to fall into them when one can be relatively certain of their own impunity. In a lot of ways, that has hurt me. On the flip side, I have gotten really good at knowing how to make people pay attention when I want them to.

My friend bemoans the fact that I'm not a magician. Sometimes, the tricks are just so much more fun to pull off without a stage.