I
suffered from the delusion that many nerds do that people would like
to watch me do magic. There are fans of magic, but some people eat
boogers, so there is no accounting for taste. Most people are vaguely
amused for a trick or act vaguely amused for politeness’s sake and
then really hope you would stop because they don't want any more but
courtesy prevents their escape. If I wanted to impress my captive
audience I would break out some slight of hand coin tricks or a card
trick. I thought this was a good way to make myself memorable and to
have an excuse to talk to girls. I don't think it was as cool as I
thought it was. On the second night of the UASC conference there were
some girls from one of the other groups that one of my friends was in
that came over to our dorm before the leadership would kick everybody
out and lock the place down. There was a girl with them who was
stunning and I like that in a woman. She had some kind of an
ambiguous and slight ethnic flavor in her features which had the
effect of making her exotic and striking while understated all
smoothed out with the every-one-looks-better-when-they-are-young
rule. I was struck by her and was for the first time in a long time
intimidated by a girl. I did what every dork boy too deep in the
morass of testosterone to stop himself does, I showed off. Lame, so
lame. I broke out the cards and the coins for a little razzle-dazzle.
In retrospect I think the girls just wanted to hang out with some new
boys and relax but I jumped right in making people pick cards and try
and find slight-handed coins. The played along and I ended up talking
to the girl I wanted too when I had gained enough confidence by being
an obnoxious nerd for a bit. She was really smart as well as
beautiful. She was also self confident to the degree that she would
laugh when I was funny and tell me I was not funny when I wasn't. Her
ethnic flair was the result of being half causation and half Japanese
which was a really good recipe. A girl like that could get me in
trouble and she did.
