If only magic were real. In the daily press of life, logic and the physical constrains of time create stress. There are just not enough hours in a day to do all that needs to get done. What if you had the added benefit of magic? With a spell, you could stretch time, allowing yourself that extra ten minutes to finish a test? You get to the boutique and the only roadside parking is a spot a bumper width too short. Magic allows you to stretch the space so you can parallel park and make your salon appointment. It’s pouring down rain and you have four heavy bags of groceries to carry from the trunk. Magic makes two bags large enough to carry to volume of four and also makes them lighter. Magic, in my opinion, wouldn’t suspend the laws of physics or nature but would just stretch them or manipulate them. Magic gives the ultimate accommodation to man, allowing him to use natural law to maximum benefit. If only……
The fantasy of magic appeals on the most fundamental level, especially to our inner child, that faint remnant of innocence that lacks the indoctrination that physics and natural law are concrete and unmalleable. I have to think that the scientists who (finally) proved the existence of the fleeting Higgs-Bozon particle have healthy child selves. The part of each of us that daydreams about rainbows and shooting stars, that blow on dandelions and makes tornadoes in 2-liter soda bottles managed to survive inside those scientists into adulthood, health and hearty. For most of us, our inner child is an anemic, skittish, frightened thing chided into submission by our grown-up selves. The adult world – the real world – eats little children. So, we keep that part of ourselves that believes in magic well hidden, if not chained in the basement. We deny it with vehemence.
I will unashamedly admit that my PawPaw had me convinced that if I could lick my elbow, I would turn into a boy. I BELIEVED HIM. I spent a lot of time trying to solve that mathematical equation but not because I wanted to be a boy. It was because it meant I had magic inside me just waiting for me to tap into it. All I had to do was lick my own elbow and Poof! Magic! I would transform into a boy: me but a boy. He didn’t say I would turn into Joe Jackson. He said I would be a boy. What else could I be or do if I could just harness all that was inside me? And so, I made the effort to lick my own elbow. My PawPaw laughed, always laughed. I now know he was laughing out of sheer joy at the spectacle of a child that so easily believes in magic. It helped him believe again, too.
