I meet up regularly with my friends Jordan and Care. Both of them are magicians, currently working their way up in the magic world as a duo act. Jordan’s been a a magician since he was a kid but Care’s only been into magic since she and Jordan became a couple.
Both use me as a test audience and tonight Care practiced on me a card trick. She cut a deck of cards and handed half to me and kept the other half herself. Both of us shuffled our halves and then split each of our halves into 4 face-down piles.
[… although they’ve been talking about magic with me for years, I have no skill as magic myself. I can’t even shuffle cards properly. During the trick, Care needed me to count off cards with my thumb from one hand to another. But I couldn’t do it. I had broken a tendon in my left thumb when I was young and it doesn’t have the right range of motion. Also my skin is so dry that the cards slide in my fingers instead of sticking properly. Care took mercy on me and had me shuffle my half-deck by fanning the cards and grabbing the middle of the deck and tossing it on the top. Care said encouraging words but a five year old could shuffle cards better.]
So now we each had our four little piles. The whole point of this trick was for Care to practice her false dealing skills and control the cards in her hand. She was to “magically” reveal a winning hand of cards from her piles.
Care asked to turn over the top card in my closest pile as she turned her same card over.
“King”, announced Care. Mine was an Ace. She then said, “I wonder what the next cards will be?”
She turned over her second card. Another King.
I turned over my card. Ace.
She turned over card three, another King! My card was …. another Ace….
At this point Care, must have been feeling things going a little sideways on her. My own thoughts were, “This is pretty funny but it’ll be too weird if my last card is an Ace too”.
So he turned over her last card …a King of course.
My card was YES! OH NO! YES! ANOTHER ACE!!!
We couldn’t believe it! Jordan broke out in hysterics. He and I couldn’t stop laughing for over a minute. Care looked pissed but she couldn’t blame me for anything; it was all just chance!
However, I do have to take responsibility for what I said to Care after we finished laughing.
“You do know, of course,” I said smiling, “that 4 Aces beats 4 Kings!!”