Well, I’d been practicing. Let me just say that right up front - I HAD been practicing. Got pretty good, too, if I do say so myself. I’d always liked magic, and making kids laugh, so of course I volunteered to do a magic show.
I was pretty excited about it, too. A little nervous, sure, but a lot excited. The local Barnes & Noble was throwing a party in their store for the release of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, and since I worked there, well of course I volunteered.
So I practiced. Even ordered a magician’s costume, and printed some cards that I could give to impressed parents who might want to hire a magician for their kid’s birthday party.
But - I had no idea at all how many people would be there. I was supposed to do a show every half hour from seven to eleven. I was figuring on a handful of nice, well-behaved, awestruck little kids for every performance - not over a hundred people from the ages of three to seventy-three jockeying for position near the stage, and the people in the back shouting at me to speak louder.
Here’s a tip - never do a trick with fire in a bookstore, even if you can guarantee ninety-five percent controllability of the fire. Here’s another tip - if you ignore the first tip make sure you know the location of the nearest extinguisher.
It's a good thing there wasn’t another inferno in town that night, cause every fire engine in the city was at the bookstore.
I must say the paramedics were very efficient. They got me into the ambulance and away from the scene before I could even say I really had been practicing. So happens I was the only one who sustained injuries from the ordeal.
So now I’m recuperating in the hospital. I wasn’t burned - no, I was sent here courtesy of the pummeling I received. See, twenty-one hundred people had pre-ordered their very own copy of the book, to be released at the stroke of midnight. Said copies which I burned up at seven-fifteen.
Copyright © 2008 by Bill Brewer, All Rights Reserved