Man o’ man is my face red! The best way to introduce this post is to remind you that the “standard” magician jokes, antics, routines, bits o’ business are not universally accepted in all ages. Not too long ago, I performed for a group of elderly ladies. They were one of the nicest and sweetest groups of people I’ve ever performed for. However, their take on life is a bit different from ours.
Let’s start with Lame Incident number one. How many times have you performed for a woman who jokingly said, “Can you make my husband disappear?” Or vice-versa. It happens all the time. So I thought it would be clever to start my “all women” show by saying, “How many of you would like me to make your husbands disappear?”
That’s funny, right? A moment of awkward silence was preceded by their response: “Can you bring mine back?” You might think that they (and yes I do mean “they”) were joking back, but their countenance and their collective sigh told me otherwise. They were dead serious (pardon the horribly tasteless pun).
Lame Incident number two: All Strung Out. This is an effect by David Regal that I love. However, it requires the audience members to thread beads onto a string… Not smart when you have athritic women with less than perfect vision. Thanks to my brilliant lack of fore-thought and non-planning, I got several women whipped up into a frenzy as the room began to buzz with faint sounds of “I can’t see the hole” and “I keep dropping the string” and “What color is this bead” and so many more that I’ve since tried to block from my memory.
Finally, Lame Incident number three: Sponge Balls! Oh yeah! I tried to do sponge balls with ladies whose hands stopped working properly years ago. Of course, anyone who does the sponges at some point puts a “single” sponge into the spectator’s hand with strict instructions to keep the hand closed. This is usually accompanied by the magician’s eager, nay, agressive assitance in closing the spectator’s head.
Of course I darn near broke her hand as I tried to forcefully close it, and I thought I was being gentle. She was just a frail old woman with a severe case of arthritis.
There were more than three atrocities that day, but my crushed ego will only allow me to tell you about these events and no more. In the end, there was a huge lesson to be learned. Despite having to pay for a retarded magician (me), they still had a great time. Imagine how much more they would have enjoyed it had I taken the extra couple of hours of thought to customize a routine to their liking or better said to their needs.
The moral of the story is simple: Know your audience. Study them ahead of time. Get advice from others who have gone before.
All kidding aside, I truly enjoyed my time with these wonderful ladies. Even with their late husbands and broken hands, in a world where it’s so easy to complain, these ladies found the silver lining in the cloud of their lives. I love them for that, and I thank them for that.
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