42 MAGIC WORDS enthralled by each deft new sleight-of-hand. Except, that is, for Miranda, a freckle-faced strawberry-blonde at the end of the table scrutinizing the steakhouse's resident mage with a 10-year-old skeptic's discerning eye. Undaunted, the mustachioed magician holds a deck of cards before his diminutive critic and asks her to recite the magic words: 'Owa Tagu Siam (Oh what a goose I am).' Miranda plays along, looking more the jaded sophisticate than the sheepish victim, even after she realizes she's been had. Then Stringer caps the trick by waving his free hand with an exaggerated flourish and pulling the card she had chosen just a minute earlier out of her pony tail. 'Tough crowd,' Stringer says with a good-natured chuckle as he waves to Miranda's parents and siblings. An active professional magician for seven years, he knows that cynics are one of the hazards of the trade. 'Some people just don't want to be fooled.'" Variations and Incantations: • O watta goo siam -- MonkeyMadhouse.com (2005) 55 Mike Gibson, "Being a Working Magician Ain't Easy -- But Local Conjurers Make a Living with Tricks Up Their Sleeves," Weekly Wire (1997)