Michael Kras
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Akward MomentsThis happened to me today and it honestly left me in the dark. I've never really experienced such a thing before.
Today at school, in Civics class, the teacher asked me if I wouldn't mind performing an effect just before class ended that day. Naturally, always loving to perform, I agreed. However this of course caught me a bit unprepared with only a deck of cards to work with for my full class. I spent some of the period thinking about a card effect that could play to the whole room. I chose Chris Kenner's 5 Speed from his excellent book Totally Out of Control.
The time came to perform, so I confidently waltzed up to the front of the classroom and got into character mode. After a slow start (some jerks naming out the selected card, resulting in needing to have another card selected), I finally got into it. It all went well, the performance went without a hitch. Only problem is, only one phase of the routine got an audible, and not much of one at that. I presented the effect to the best of my ability and did my normal routine which is usually quite strong, but all I got was dead air throughout each phase of 5 Speed.
Then the big moment came... the surprise appearance of the previously selected card! That never fails to get some sort of a reaction! I did a suspensful reveal, looking out into the crowd as I did so. Their faces... nothing. Not a smile, not a laugh, nothing. I looked down, and lo and behold, the card selected was the other Black Five (anyone familiar with the effect will understand why this sort of thing wouldn't go over well). The card had no contrast, no nothing, and the effect was ruined. I remained standing at the front, doing nervous fidgety All-Round Square Ups in a sad attempt to distract me from the akward tension. I just stood with a doepy smile on my face, with a painfully long silence.
Ever been in a situation like this? Any lines you use? What do you do when this happens? Normally, I would have gone into another effect to redeem myself but I didn't have any time to do so after the 5 Speed fiasco. But this time, I was just at a loss for words except for "Thanks for watching~" and could only stand up and endure the painful silence until the class started talking again.
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