A few nights ago I was working at my computer when Annie strolled over to me and said, “Dad, do you know any magic?” This made me smile – I love that she’s at an age where the prospect that her dad knows magic is totally reasonable.

“Why yes,” I said, arching an eyebrow. “I do happen to know a little magic.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t actually know any magic. I searched my mind, trying to think of any trick I might have picked up from TV or my junior high locker room, but the only thing that popped into my mind was that stupid “pull a coin out of the ear” schtick. There was no way I was going to do that, but then I remembered that Annie was three and there was a good chance she wouldn’t find it as lame and cliche as I did.

“You know what I can do?” I said in my best David Copperfield voice. “I can pull a quarter…. A QUARTER… out of your ear!”

Annie’s eyes widened. “Out of my head?”

“Uh, yeah,” I told my little weirdo, then reached into my pocket, palmed a quarter, and “pulled” it out of Annie’s ear.

doin' magic thangs

doin' magic thangs

Annie’s mind? Blown.

“Here,” I told her. “Put the quarter in your piggy bank.”

Of course, Annie being Annie, she wanted me to pull a quarter out of her ear over, and over, and over again. Eventually – some time the next day – she’d dropped every last coin in our home into her piggy bank.

“Can you pull another coin out of my head, Dad?” she soon asked, all excited.

“I’m afraid there are no more coins in your head, sweetie. They’re all gone.”

You’d think that not having any coins in your head would be a good thing, but Annie clearly didn’t feel that way. Feeling bad, I improvised and said, “But… uh… there might be something else in there.”

I scanned the room, searching, until my eyes settled on the salt shaker. I snatched it up, hid it behind my back, then quickly pulled it out of her ear.

“Whoa! That was in my head, too?”

“It sure was. Right next to your medulla oblangata.”

That’s when things started to get silly. Before you knew it the items I was taking out of her ear were bigger and bigger: my wallet, my phone, sunglasses…

And then things got ridiculous:

doin' magic thangs

How exactly did I pull that off, you ask? Well, I just snapped twice near her right ear with my left hand, then when she turned to the sound I quickly “pulled” the bread from her right ear. Magic!

At this point Annie was laughing with a twinkle in her eye, and I don’t think she quite believed any of this stuff was actually coming out of her ear. She loved to pretend it was, though.

That night Heather’s mom, Linda, came over and Annie ran up to her, breathless.

“Grandma! There’s bread in my head!”

Who says I don’t know magic?