Are You Living Under an Illusion?

"Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur"

Latin Proverb - "The world wants to be fooled, so fool it."

The following story really did happen to me in 2016. I sometimes tell it during my magic shows....

I was sitting at a table in a coffee shop, waiting for my friend Dave, and happened to have a magnet in my pocket. So I put my car keys on the table and used the magnet underneath the table to move the keys around. I wasn’t performing a trick for anyone—nobody was watching—this is just the sort of thing that one does to kill time when one’s a magician.

Dave came in and watched the keys move around the table. He walked over and said,

“You know, Elias, that’s not a very good trick.”

I had been wondering if this was something I should add to my shows or not.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I can see the strings,” He replied, a bit condescendingly.