you can take the rabbit out of the hat but you can't take the hat out of the rabbit
He’s a ten-year old boy, possibly of latino decent.
The boy is walking far ahead of his family, not out of defiance, just naturally, exuding the self-sufficiency common to young chidren who ride the bus alone and traverse the grid without any conscious effort.
He’s investigating my chewing-gum-infested quarter. The quarter is stuck to my thumb as I’m musing about the everyday curiosity of city life. The profane and the sacred.
I received the disgustingly sticky-and-chewed-up quarter as change after, ironically, buying gum at the convenience store. As if further mirroring the absurdity of life, the clerk was a Polish woman, my age, who was perhaps who I would’ve been had I been born overseas. It was beautiful, it was repulsive.
He’s staring at the quarter, on my thumb, with gaping mouth, walking toward me on the sidewalk.
I say to the boy, with a smile, “It’s magic!!!”
As he walks past he cranes his neck to bear witness to the miracle as long as possible.
A mere six steps later, he turns and somehow, by instinct, I turn around at the same moment to meet his gaze. He yells to me, “Nu-uh! You just put glue on it!” And continues walking with an air of accomplishment.
Simultaneously I realize: There’s no more magic in the world for children.
And.
You can’t pull the wool over even the youngest of New Yorker’s eyes.
I laugh hysterically for the next three blocks, doubled over like a junkie half-crazed Catholic woman lost on the streets of Jerusalem.