Except on Stage, Mind-Reading is Usually a MistakeInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

"What am I thinking?"

As with prior essays by Paw, we cannot vouch that one word of this is true — ed.

There’s
one thing I cannot stand: people who categorize people. No one I’ve
ever met has fit a category after I got to know them better. They
surprise you and you’re left to wonder why on earth you assumed they
were one way or another.

I learned this lesson the hard way – I lost someone because I figured I had a gift to read that person’s mind.

Long before I went on the road and even longer before I met Tim’s dad, Little Tom Hardy – the only mind-reader I know – I worked with an assistant.

We did a mind reading act with Millie on stage, blindfolded, and me in the audience looking for objects to be identified.

I met Millie when my previous assistant called in pregnant.

I didn’t do box jumping illusions so it wasn’t as if Edna couldn’t stay with the show. She decided to stay with her husband and raise a family. That was probably the right decision. Millie was hired by my manager at the time.

She had worked as a secretary, a radio voice, a dancer and finally an assistant. She was young, much younger than me. She claimed to be 22 but my guess was she was pushing 19 if anything.

She sure was pretty.

She was thin but not so thin that you thought she had something wrong with her guts. She had long brown hair and her eyes would light up when she spoke. She was excited about virtually everything. She was excited to be on the road, excited to see California for the first time, excited to learn how to do a mind-reading act, excited to wear the costumes I’d get for her and, according to her, excited to be working with me.

I assumed that because she was working her first gig as an assistant; she thought she had to appear excited about everything.

We talked a lot but I still assumed her interest was feigned.

Surely she couldn’t be excited about learning a mind-reading act that was light-years behind Eddie Fields’ code system. And without a question, she couldn’t be excited about working with or traveling with or knowing me.

Now a days, we’d call that insecurity on my part. Back then, I assumed it was just true. One night we were in Nevada City, California.

Nice town, lousy audiences. We were on the bill with a dancing couple and a man who could say any word backwards. He could even do whole sentences backwards. Unlike the vaudeville rules of thumb, here it was no honor to be the second-to-last act on the bill – the others were terrible. Before we went on, Millie told me that she had to tell me something.

I nodded and waited.

She said she couldn’t tell me before the show because she was so nervous.

Now, we’d done the act about 100 times before that night so I didn’t think she could be nervous about the show. She had something to tell me and whatever it was, made her nervous.

I guessed it was that she was pregnant and was about to leave the act. I was upset by this. We had just gotten the system down. We could even work two ahead (if you’re not a mentalist, you have no idea what I’m…

"What am I thinking?"

As with prior essays by Paw, we cannot vouch that one word of this is true — ed.

I learned this lesson the hard way – I lost someone because I figured I had a gift to read that person’s mind.

Long before I went on the road and even longer before I met Tim’s dad, Little Tom Hardy – the only mind-reader I know – I worked with an assistant.

We did a mind reading act with Millie on stage, blindfolded, and me in the audience looking for objects to be identified.

I met Millie when my previous assistant called in pregnant.

She had worked as a secretary, a radio voice, a dancer and finally an assistant. She was young, much younger than me. She claimed to be 22 but my guess was she was pushing 19 if anything.

She sure was pretty.

I assumed that because she was working her first gig as an assistant; she thought she had to appear excited about everything.

We talked a lot but I still assumed her interest was feigned.

Now a days, we’d call that insecurity on my part. Back then, I assumed it was just true. One night we were in Nevada City, California.

I nodded and waited.

She said she couldn’t tell me before the show because she was so nervous.

Now, we’d done the act about 100 times before that night so I didn’t think she could be nervous about the show. She had something to tell me and whatever it was, made her nervous.

Then I realized I’d traveled with her for the last six months. She’d been with me the entire time and I couldn’t imagine how she became pregnant during that time.

My upset feelings gave way to anger and jealousy. I had no claim over Millie. But here I was feeling jealous of her and her relationship with someone I never suspected.

So we started doing what we did. She was excited to tell me something and I was so angry, I could kill someone.

We finished the act, walked off to the wings, and I walked past her.

I didn’t want to hear her story about how she was leaving the act for whatever reason – and for whomever she had been with when I wasn’t looking. She asked me if she could tell me what she had to tell me and I told her "no."

I was gruff and pissed. I was angry and jealous and she was excited. After I told her "no," her excitement was gone and I felt justified. She looked at me with the most hurt I’d ever seen in her eyes or anyone’s eyes.

She never told me. In fact, after that, we didn’t talk much and by the time we hit Sacramento, she blew the show. I have no idea what she was going to tell me.

I don’t think it was that she was pregnant or that she, at that time, was going to leave the show.

I’ve thought about it for a lot of years and sometimes I’m convinced that she was going to tell me that she had a crush on me or that she loved me. I don’t know how I’d deal with that – probably not good. But now I’ve been through – completely through – three marriages and I can’t think of a single one of those wives I wouldn’t have traded for one week with Millie. It was as if I was always comparing the current wife or fling with Millie and her excited eyes. The hard part of this story is that I was sure I knew what Millie was going to tell me without having a clue. It was like the opposite of our mentalism act.

I couldn’t read her mind and yet I was so convinced I could that I didn’t even listen to what she had to say. Listen to someone who has learned the hard way.

Magic News Magic