Keeping the magic alive

For many years when I was a child I thought my father had magical powers. He could blow smoke out of his ears and made circles with his smoke. He could make his thumb disappear. He would blow at red lights magically they would turn green.

But the biggest trick of all, the one that made me feel like he was truly magic, was one with invisible balls. He would take a paper bag and hand us an invisible ball. "This one is red " he would say. Then he would stand across the room and ask us to throw the ball into the bag. We would do our best to get our invisible ball into the bag and usually heard the ball hit the bag, And we could see the bag move. Then he would say come over and pick out the yellow ball. But every now and then he would tell us "no no that is not the yellow ball that is the green ball, pick out the yellow ball." We would reach back into the bag pull out a ball full of nothing and ask "is this the yellow ball?" And so the game went.

I probably would have believed this game for much longer had I not heard him telling another father how to play this game with his own children.

When we didn't want to eat something at dinner, dad would fake whisper to mom, "you didn't tell them about this being magic, did you? They're not supposed to know".

I am not a smoker, so I can't make smoke do interesting things. I have long forgotten how to make my thumb disappear, and I drive so rarely I don't think to make red lights turn green, or tell the windshield wipers to go on and off. But I am really looking forward to trying that invisible ball trick with my sons one day.

The other night Ranger was balking at eating spaghetti at his grandparent's house. It was a case of too many other cool things to pay attention to- he normally likes spaghetti. So I told him that his grandmother's home made spaghetti had special magical powers. Sure enough he ate some after that. The next day I happened across a hoodie with the Flash logo on it and made to look all super hero-ish. And it was on sale! So when I gave it to him I told him it could make him run extra fast because he ate his grandmother's spaghetti. He spent the next few hours doing his adorable skip-run and saying he was SUP-er BOY!

I love that children can believe in magic. I think it's an important part of an awesome childhood. That and knock knock jokes.