My dad's magic string trick
10/12/03 11:58 AM
Isn�t it wonderful when a child looks at you in total awe and just knows that you are the smartest person in the whole wide world? That's how I felt about my father, Albert Stallman. My dad had this string trick to beat all tricks and when I learned it I also believed he and I had this fantastic string trick that no one else could EVER learn. It went like this: Tie the ends of a piece of string (15-20 inches long) together. Drape one end of the loop over someone�s upheld index finger and the other end of the loop over your own upheld index finger then put the tips of the fingers together. A few clever twists of the string and voila � the string comes off without ever having to disconnect the two index fingers. I used to try to teach my children this trick (to pass it down the family line), but it must be a change of the times. I didn�t even impress them. There must be someone out there who would like to learn this magic trick.
And my mother � she had the ability to pull a string on the top of a 5 or 10-pound bag of sugar and the whole top would become untied. HOW DID SHE DO THAT??? Even after I got married (I was practically pre-pubescent) it was some quite time before I mastered that feat.