W00t Tumblin'

Let me assert right here that magic may be the greatest hobby for a kid. It’s all-consuming. Get your problem child interested in it. The first time your kid masters a trick and performs it — and an adult, genuinely amazed, says, “How in heck did you do that?” — your potential juvenile delinquent will be hooked and too absorbed in the new hobby to steal hubcaps.

I’m not saying a Svengali deck given as a bar mitzvah present would have spared us Bernie Madoff. Nor am I claiming that a magic deck popped into Dick Cheney’s or Donald Rumsfeld’s Christmas stockings would have spared the world their predations. But it’s possible.