Thoughts

§Marinated Rabbit

Steve Corbitt

“Have Fun!”….”Have fun”… “It’s supposed to be fun. I kept repeating this to myself.

It was near the beginning of my first year performing magic and close to the last trick of my show. It seemed like more than two hours had passed since the beginning of my thirty-minute show. I had been on for twenty-five minutes. I was the magician at Michael’s birthday party. Michael was seven today. You could tell Michael from the other kids by the “special” birthday hat he was wearing. It was made of balloons. Twelve balloons to be exact. I knew this because I had made it. To be honest, I’d made four of them for him. He decided he liked the first one when I told him I was out of balloons.

Michael was a very busy young man. Feverishly alternating between force feeding himself candy, sticking pieces he couldn’t fit in his mouth to his clothes, and throwing candy at the magician. Occasionally he would shout out sweet little comments like, “you stink”, “I know how you did that”, and “aww, we saw that last year”. This of course would send half-dissolved bits of candy spewing from his mouth that landed on everyone and everything within ten feet of him. I was approximately eight feet away directly in front of him.

There were 12 kids at Michael’s party. Michael was the best behaved. The parents were in the kitchen drinking. I would occasionally hear comments such as, “takes after YOUR mother!”, “are you sure I’m the father?”, “and, ”how dare you talk about my grandchildren like that”. Apparently they didn’t like these children either and were thankful that the magician was there to “baby-sit”.

I thought with sadness that if these adults had considered the word “parent” as more of an action verb and less of a label, then perhaps the world could have been spared this particular group of devil spawn.

A seven-year-old with colorful selection of half eaten suckers stuck to his clothing darted up and snatched the silk handkerchiefs from the top of my table. To be honest, I’m not sure if he snatched them or if they just attached themselves to the melted caramels that encased his hands. I responded quickly by gently picking him up by his neck, and in a calm fatherly voice I said,

“Sit down and shut up you little rat or I’ll break your legs”.

This gentle, patient approach when it comes to handling children not only creates a special bond with the kids, but endears me to parents as well. I believe this is one of the major reasons my career in children entertainment has reached the point it’s at now.

He of course being ashamed of his conduct responded in a voice that, I was later told, caused a dog over a block away to fall whimpering to the ground in a curled fetal position.

“I’m telling, and my dad’s going to have you thrown in jail!”

Kids say the cutest things.

Ordinarily, I would have spent a few moments gently chastising this child, but I had my silk handkerchiefs in one hand and a hand full of his throat in the other. Veteran kidshow performers overwhelmingly agree that this is a major “no no”. One of the cardinal rules when working with children is to always, ALWAYS keep a hand free to protect your groin and shins. A lesson I’ve had the opportunity to re-learn on several occasions.

I opted to return him to his fellow “children of the night” and placed him back into the sugar demented demon pit from whence he’d came. At this point I chuckled out loud. I remember thinking to myself, “It’s time”. Time for my final trick. Time for my grand finale. Time for the illusion that these diminutive refugees from a Freddy Kruger nightmare would remember for the rest of their lives. The trick that elevates me from the rank of birthday party kid show performer to legendary master magician, to magical star! Yes… YES!!.. Rabbit production from a burning pan.

I began to laugh out loud. My face turning red, my voice rising in pitch and volume. My eyes shining with a maniacal glee. I stared and sneered. The children stared back, becoming deathly quiet. Their flushed faces, increasingly pale and gray. An uneasy confusion had been awakened and it crept into their little candy-crazed consciousness. I triumphantly slammed the production pan down and poured the “magic” lighter fluid into it. A maniacal laugh escaped from my mouth. The children whimpered. Their lips trembling. Lighting the fluid I could see the terror in their little eyes as the light from the flames danced and reflected off their pale white faces. They huddled together. Arms thrown about each other.

The parents had come into the living room. They were concerned. The children were quiet and parents know this is not a natural event. I would say that mom and dad were overjoyed to see a two foot open flame in the living area of their home, but I could tell just from the expressions on their faces, the word “overjoyed” came no where near describing the intensity of their emotions..

Perhaps they thought the kids had driven me mad. Well they were wrong. Wrong I tell you! …bwa ha ha.

Uncle Steve The Great, Uncle Steve the magnificent, when I pulled the top off this pan and they saw fluffy the rabbit. Then they would realize! Then they would know! Time stood still. The moment had arrived. I paused. I savored it. I wanted this to last forever!

Now, folks, lets pause our story and talk. Over the years I’ve made many discoveries, and like most of us, my discoveries were made, by making mistakes. On this particular day, I

discovered that when a live rabbit is sitting in a pan. If that pan gets warm, the rabbit will relieve himself. I don’t know if this is caused by stress or by a desire to cool the pan off. I do know that the amount of liquid the rabbit produces seems to be directly proportional to the temperature of the pan. In this instance, the pan was very warm. I also discovered that, not only is rabbit urine a thick, foul smelling, noxious substance, but, that it will adhere to human hair and clothing in a manner that is both pungent and enduring.

Now as we return to our story. You will remember our hero, that’s me, is about to produce Fluffy the rabbit and Fluffy is sitting in Rabbit Pee. Perhaps sitting isn’t the correct word. Let’s say that Fluffy’s feet and stomach have been “marinating” in an inch deep pool of Rabbit Pee.

With a dramatic flair, I slammed the lid onto the burning pan. The flames were extinguished. The sound of exhaled air filled the room as parents once again began to breathe. The children quit praying began to make their normal primordial guttural noises.

With an elegant motion, I gracefully lifted the lid from the slightly charred pan revealing Fluffy, in all his long eared magnificence. Parents smiled and laughed. Children clapped and cheered. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and all was right with the world. I was the hero, the star, the knight in shining armor.

It was at this wonderful glorious moment, and then I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I lifted Fluffy high into the air. Holding him around his middle I immediately realized that Fluffy was dripping wet. He was kicking the air as quick an hard as he could with feet that were now basically cotton swab’s filled with rabbit urine, and a generous quantity of Rabbit pee was being flung into the air. It rained down adhering itself to children, furniture and carpeting. The children joyfully shouted phrases like,

“Eww, What is that?”

“It stinks!”

“ Get if off me!”

And

“I think I’m going to be sick!”

Parents were frozen, disbelief on their faces, hands covering their mouths, and I was packing my props with the speed of a comic book super hero, all the time loudly and repeatedly saying,

“Don’t worry. It’s the magic yellow water, and if it touches you, you’ll be magic too!”

I’ll never forget that feeling. Standing by my car. Props hastily tossed in the back seat. Fluffy safely sitting on the newspaper in his cage. My clothes covered in a bizarre combination of candy, fur, and rabbit urine. Wondering what I should say to the parents,

“Is everything OK?”

“Are the kids still throwing up?”

“Am I getting paid?”

I was ten steps past the threshold of pain and was thinking that maybe, just maybe, magical entertainment wasn’t for me. Maybe I should do something easy like working in a salt mine. I was getting into the car when Michael’s grandfather came out of the house and shouted at me to “hang on a sec”. I decided to wait. He was the only adult that watched the show, and besides, he was ninety years old. If it got ugly, I figured I could take him. That’s assuming I could get the cane away from him.

He came up and smiled at me. He shoved my fee plus an extra twenty in my hand. Gently patting me on the cheek, He said,

“You did good kid. You survived a trip to entertainer’s hell, and for a moment, you had’em. Keep working at it, and that moment will come much more often and each time it does, it’ll last longer”.

He smiled at me and I found myself smiling back.

Stammering, red faced, I mumbled, “Thank you”.

He started to walk away, then stopping he turned back to me and said, “ oh, and one last thing. While I personally got a real kick out of it, you might want to get rid of the magic yellow water trick”.

The End

Or was that the beginning?