When I was about ten years old, I had a short list of things I wanted to do sometime in my life.

Ocean City First Night magician was never a title I expected to have, but becoming a magician was something I had wanted to do since I was about ten years old.

I had a short list of things I wanted to accomplish sometime in my life. One of them was simple: I wanted to learn magic, perform it, and at least once stand on a real stage in front of an audience.

Years later, somehow, I actually did it.

I don’t think I had any grand plan beyond that. I wasn’t dreaming about Las Vegas or television specials. I wanted to learn magic, perform it, and at least once stand on a real stage in front of an audience.

Years later, somehow, I actually did it.

Learning Magic in Ocean City

Sometime in the early 1990s, magic became more than something I fooled around with at home.

I spent a few summers working at a magic shop on the Ocean City Boardwalk. I wish I could remember the name of the shop now. What I do remember is where it was: next to the Bashful Banana.

That job gave me a chance to spend a lot of time around magic, learn tricks, practice them repeatedly, and figure out how to perform them in front of actual people.

My mentor and teacher was Bill Howard.

Eventually I started doing shows for kids. I also performed sleight-of-hand while working as a waiter at Schooners. Restaurant magic was perfect training because there was nowhere to hide. You were standing a few feet away from people who were watching your hands, and if something went wrong, they were going to know it.

I had a pretty good collection of tricks by then.

There were card tricks and coin tricks, cups and balls, the little red sponge balls, and a trick where salt seemed to pass right through a piece of cloth. I also learned how to make a lit cigarette disappear in my hand.

The cups and balls were especially fun to do on a bar. They worked well in that setting because people could stand close, watch every move, and still miss what was happening right in front of them.

Then there was the other side of my magic career.

At bars, I performed what would probably best be described as adult or X-rated sleight-of-hand tricks. One of those involved apparently pulling a pair of “panties” from a woman’s jeans.

Those were obviously a little different from the kids’ shows.

It was also a fantastic time.

Not Exactly the Career My Future In-Laws Had in Mind

My future in-laws were not especially impressed with my chosen profession.

Looking back, I can understand their concern.

I wasn’t making much money, and telling people that your daughter’s boyfriend was working in a Boardwalk magic shop and performing tricks in bars probably didn’t sound like the beginning of an especially secure career.

They weren’t wrong.

Being a magician was never going to be my long-term profession.

But at that point in my life, I wasn’t particularly concerned about building a résumé. I was young, I was living in Ocean City, and I was getting paid occasionally to do something I had wanted to do since I was a kid.

There are worse ways to spend a few summers.

Becoming an Ocean City First Night Magician

Ocean City’s First Night celebration began in 1992, so when I performed there a few years later, it was still a relatively new New Year’s Eve tradition.

I believe it may have been New Year’s Eve going into 1996, although I don’t remember the exact year anymore.

What I do remember is being on stage with Bill Howard.

That was the moment.

The kid who had decided years earlier that he wanted to become a magician was standing on an actual stage, performing in front of an audience, alongside the person who had taught him.

Becoming an Ocean City First Night magician brought that childhood goal full circle.

And strangely enough, that was enough.

I didn’t walk off the stage thinking about the next show, a bigger audience, or turning magic into a career.

I had done what I wanted to do.

Bucket list: checked.

And Then I Was Done

After that, magic gradually disappeared from my life.

There was no dramatic decision to quit. No disastrous performance. No moment when I threw my cards and coins into a box and declared that I was finished.

Life simply moved on.

Other jobs came along. Responsibilities changed. Eventually careers, marriage, family, and everything else replaced summers working on the Boardwalk and performing tricks for people in restaurants and bars.

But for a few years, I actually was a magician.

I worked in a magic shop.

I performed for kids.

I did sleight-of-hand at restaurant tables.

I performed considerably less respectable tricks in bars.

And sometime around the mid-1990s, I became an Ocean City First Night magician, standing on stage with Bill Howard and completing something I had wanted to do since I was about ten years old.

I never became a famous magician.

That was never really the goal.

I just wanted to be one.

For a little while, I was.

Check out my post on When We Could Still Afford to Live in Ocean City