Magic Act

Our wedding was special because we had so many personal touches. My best friend, Rick, is an extremely talented artist and musician. He not only wrote a song for the ceremony, but also played guitar and taught another friend the song. They performed the song beautifully together and it absolutely meant the world to me.
The evening of the rehearsal, Rick adjusted the sound system in the church so they would be able to sing without microphones and be heard throughout the sanctuary.
There was only one small problem.
The priest liked to wear a lapel mike, and we did not take that into consideration.
When the frazzled priest arrived slightly tardy to the rehearsal, he began speaking into his mike and was instantly irritated. “Who’s been messing with the sound system?!”, he demanded. Rick sheepishly raised his hand like a third grader, “I... “, he stammered. “I fixed it.”
“Oh you fixed it alright!”, the normally even-tempered priest retorted!
It was one of those horrifying moments one never forgets.
Later, my niece, Leigh, who fancied herself a bit of a magician at the time, entertained our guests with her little magic tricks, including but not limited to pulling quarters out of the guests’ ears. When she came to Rick, who has always been one of her favorite people, she proudly pulled the shiniest quarter from his ear with stars twinkling in her eyes and he said, “That’s pretty good, Leigh, now can you pull a priest out of my ass?”