I Pissed Off a Girl Watching My Magic Show

So I had my first real heckler last Saturday when I did a magic show in the back theater at the restaurant I work at. She was a young pre-teen/teenage girl (12-13).

Now the kids magic I do is nothing special - doesn't require a lot of skills. The most difficult thing I do is a pretty simple cups and balls routine, but I do get the laughs, and I do entertain both the kids and adults, and I tie several separate tricks into a relatively long routine that gets the laughs.

Anyway, Little Miss Bitch (LMB) sat down on the level closest to my magic case and kept interrupting me with comments. "I know how you did that." "Why don't you do linking rings? My dad does linking rings, and he's much better than you." "You're kind of amateurish." I have no idea what her problem was except she had a chip on her shoulder that day, or she doesn't like to see anyone "challenge" her daddy in any realm. The weird thing is that she kept raising her hand whenever I asked for a volunteer.

Guess who didn't get picked?

The second to last trick I do is with a Die Box. This is essentially used to just drive kids (and adults) crazy. The main gist of it is that after putting a large die into a box with two doors, you tilt the box and open one door to show the die has disappeared then tilt the other end and open the other door to show it's not there either. Kids will immediately call you on this and tell you to open the other end, which you do, tilting it each time. You can milk it for a good five minutes depending on the kids. LMB got extremely upset during this routine and even pounded her head against my magic case in frustration and jumped up to try and take the box from me. In the end, I open both doors at the same time, and the die has disappeared. LMB was not happy about that (teenager knows all syndrome).

The last trick uses a volunteer and is a type of prediction trick. It looks like I let the audience but not the volunteer in on how it works, but it looks like I still mess it up royally until I reveal the true ending, surprising everyone. The volunteer also gets a nifty balloon octopus, which figures into the routine. LMB was really enjoying my supposed frustration when the volunteer wasn't answering my questions like I wanted him to, but when it turned out the prediction worked out after all, she was steaming. She tried to grab the props off of my case to try and figure out the trick, and I finally had to really break character and tell her to sit down, stop acting worse than the 5-year-olds, and keep her hands to herself. She stuck her tongue out at me.

The show was over; the kids and adults all clapped; some adults shook my hand and thanked me for the show, and the theater emptied except for one gentleman who stayed behind to chat. He told me that I did a good job, not only with the magic (he said he was fooled on everything) but also with the girl. He was interested in magic so I showed him a few extra tricks, and lo-and-behold, who came into the theater but LMB.

Seems that several of the parents at my show followed her back to her table and informed her parents just what LMB had been doing, and daddy sent her back to apologize. I accepted her apology, gave her a short lecture that what I was doing was a quasi-living, and my job is to entertain, and while she may not be entertained or even bored by what I do, the other audience members might be having fun, and she was not only vexing me, but her actions also had the potential to ruin everyone elses' time. She looked appropriately abashed.

By that time her father had entered the theater and had also apologized. Before she left, just to show I was the "bigger man" (but also to be a jerk), I offered to show her a card trick to demonstrate there were no hard feelings. I then did my most powerful card trick for her and the gentleman I was talking to. It amazed and amused the gentleman.

It further vexed the hell out of LMB. Mission accomplished.