t was a cold Thursday morning. The sky had faded to a light gray. I was sitting in Spanish class and the clock was crawling along. Today was one of those days when nothing really happened. Mrs. Kennedy was in the corner of the room, chatting with some of the students. I tapped my friend in front of me on the shoulder and said the words that changed my life forever: “Have you ever seen an invisible deck of cards?” This is the standard opening for an amazing card trick called the Invisible Deck. Here is the effect: my friend picked an imaginary card from an invisible fan of cards. He then placed his imaginary card back into the deck facedown. Next, my friend named any card in the deck. I pull out a visible deck of cards and fanned through them. There was only one facedown card in the whole deck, which miraculously was the named card.

I have always been afraid of performing, but by the end of the day I had performed the Invisible Deck about thirty times. When I did it on the back of the bus, people started screaming so loud, I was scared that we were going to get kicked off. Powerful reactions like this were overwhelming, and they are what kept me going and helped me overcome my fear. Knowing that the magic I had spent hours practicing was having a big impact on people also motivated me to learn more magic and to practice even harder.

It is nearly impossible to accurately draw parallels between magic and anything else in the world. I don’t even feel right calling it a hobby. The main difference between magic and my other activities is the emphasis on individuality. In soccer, I am a player on a team. In Boy Scouts, I am a member of a troop. But in magic, I take pride in being alone and performing by myself. Because of this individual identity, it makes me prouder and more protective of my reputation. I try to never expose secrets of magic because exposure would not only hurt my reputation, but it would eventually damage the magic community in general. David Blaine writes: “The magic isn’t in the trick, it’s in the [audience’s] eyes.” He is saying that magic isn't about the magician or even the effect; it's about the audience and its reaction. My job is to disturb their reality by stretching their mental boundaries of what is and isn’t possible. As a magician, I am only a catalyst; my purpose is simply to be the best I can be and to give people the best experience that they allow themselves to have.

Hecklers and non-believers are people who refuse, even before the effect has begun, to accept magic for what it is, thus killing the art and science of magic. Once again, this is where magic is completely different than sports: if someone picked on me in soccer, I would directly and physically challenge him or her. But in magic, I am a performer and no one likes a performer who belittles his audience. Skeptics force me to show self-restraint and perfect my performance. One of my best friends turned out to be my worst heckler. It is against his religion to believe in magic, and whenever I perform he tries to figure out the secret instead of being entertained. I have learned not to perform for those who won’t appreciate magic.

Magic gave me the confidence to perform in front of strangers and my peers. It also taught me how to be more imaginative. In the words of the great street magician Daniel Garcia: "Nobody wrote a rule book on magic. Nobody. Not one rule book." There are thousands of other people who invent magic for a living, and I know that if I open my mind more and become more creative, I could become one of them. At my age, many teenagers work as waiters. But once I get enough experience, I want to start a job as a magician, and slowly move up the ladder, performing magic for anyone with the time and the interest. I don’t know where magic will take me in the future, but I will always remember that it all started out with an invisible deck of cards.