BENTONVILLE — The show starts when the cards come out. They're ordinary cards. They're always ordinary. It's not much of a trick if they're not. The magic is in the hands.
The resident magician on this day is Ryan Smith.
A day late for his 12th birthday, Ryan is the guest of honor at a party under streamers in a room at the Malco Pinnacle Hills 12 theater. Because his guests are family, Ryan already has their attention.
"Now I need a volunteer from the audience," Ryan announces loudly. "I need you to pick out a card, any card."
The card goes in the deck, just as most tricks start.
Ryan asks his volunteer if he'd be surprised to see the card face up in a face-down deck. The face-up card is a five, not the right card. Ryan puts his finger in the air to signify an idea that has formed. He deals five cards - four face down - and he flips the last one over.
It'sthe card, the chosen one.
One by one, the other four cards are revealed as the deck's four aces.
Hands folded across his chest, George Reader leans against the glass separating Ryan's performance from the average moviegoers. Since taking Ryan on as a student, George has evolved from teacher to mentor, and today, to cheerleader. From his vantage, George sees the backs of heads and Ryan's face, but the pupil isn't looking in George's direction. From trick to trick, George maintains a scowl of concentration as he watches Ryan perform.
It also doesn't look like he's breathing.
Ryan's stepmother, Katrina Smith, is preoccupied with a cake, once shaped like a popcorn bucket, that shifted during transport. That it remains recognizable, though distorted, is almost itself magic. Trying to keep the cake together, Katrina misses the whole show.
She won't say she intentionally didn't look because she was too nervous.
There's reason for the trepidation. It all stems from Asperger's syndrome, an ironic way to put it because Ryan is only learning magic to help keep him from stemming.
◊ ◊ ◊
Ryan was 5 or 6 when his parents first thought there might be something wrong.
"We were getting comments from the preschool teachers," says Mark Smith, Ryan's father.
Ryan's shy, withdrawn personality prompted the educators to mention Asperger's syndrome.
"He was showing some of the classic symptoms," Mark says.
Asperger's syndrome is a pervasive development disorder, a category that also includes autism. Like autism, Asperger's impairs a person's abilities to make social connections, although it does not include slowed verbal and emotional development, says Dr. Zaid Malik, a psychiatrist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
"If an autism child is sitting in front of you, he will not relate to you; he will treat you as another object in his room," Malik says. 'If an Asperger's child is sitting in front of you, he will tend to labor on a subject that interests him. The way he is relating isn't the way people want him to."
The similarities between autism and Asperger's notwithstanding, stemming is a symptom more reminiscent of obsessive-compulsive disorder. When Ryan stems, which happens often when he isn't paying attention tohis hands, his clenched fists tuck themselves under his chin. It's the behavior that most often singles him out from his classmates.
Mark says it was difficult to hear there was something wrong with his son, but he also felt the relief of now being able to seek treatment instead of helplessly watching.
◊◊ ◊
Without a card deck or magic wand in sight, George reveals his hand when it comes to his tutorship of Ryan.
"No sugarcoating? He's the best student I ever had," George says.
Ryan is also George's youngest student and his only student with an admitted developmental disorder.
It's been hard work making Ryan his best student.
George's lessons come with a time limit. Not his - Ryan's.
"He's distracted very easily," George says. "You can see when he's done (with the lesson). There's just this light switch, and he is done."
There's also the teaching method. Ryan's mental comprehension of a trick comes long before any physical competency.
Often, Ryan has trouble mimicking simple hand positions. He's a southpaw and only needs to mirror the right-handed George.
"I've taken, literally, a hands-on approach," George says. "I have to physically direct his hands."
George doesn't mind, having himself struggled with minor obsessive-compulsive disorder and dyslexia.
◊ ◊ ◊
Ryan's second birthday trick is his best. The misdirection requires the audience to believe in the ineptitude of the performer.
Ryan, as the magician, turns over card after card after card face up into a pile on the table. All the cards end up face up, save one, and the unknown card in Ryan's hand is not the one chosen by his volunteer. The chosen card is in the pile on the table, still visible enough that the volunteer knows the magician made a mistake and passed it by.
"Wouldn't you be surprised if this card were yours?" Ryan asks, holding up that one card that cannot possibly be the one.
The volunteer smirks. "Yes, I would," he says with a hint of sarcasm.
Ryan's hand slams the card to the table. "So would I," he declares, reaching into the pile and grabbing the chosen card everyone thought he missed.
◊◊ ◊
When it's working, Ryan's sense of humor is as subtle as Jim Carrey's. Ryan is boisterous, over the top. Trying a handcuff escape during his lessons, Ryan pounds an untethered fist on the table, loudly lamenting his inability to free himself. It fits well into the visual art of prestidigitation. It's also clear why his parents want him to settle down a little.
But his style, while overwhelming, also offers some surprises. Ryan's one-liners are generally well timed and well delivered. They are drawn from his own experiences, which makes them unique to him, but that may also be due to his difficulties in mimicking others, seemingly brushing off George's attempts to fine-tune Ryan's presentation in favor of another one-liner. He can, when he's "on," show insightful comedic instincts.
"He's all about cracking the jokes, being the funny guy," Katrina says.
One misstep, however, always leads to another.
If Ryan is Jim Carrey when his jokes deliver laughs, he's Moe Howard when they don't. Wild gesticulations give way to slapstick, even to the unwilling, because of Ryan's desperation to win back his audience. Telling a joke at home, while his parents are bidding adieu to George and another magician, one of Ryan's jokes misses its mark, mostly because the adults are paying attention to each other. Another joke flies, and another joke fails. Suddenly, Katrina finds herself shoved, playfully, into the living room, away from the adults, by a stepson needing someone to pay attention to him.
Malik says that while therapy can help such behaviors disappear, they are not the child's fault.
"The worst thing that can happen to an Asperger's child is to punish him for something he has no control over," Malik says.
◊◊ ◊
In layman's terms, Ryan has no filter.
"There are no cognitive delays," Malik says of those with Asperger's. "They know what might happen, but they're helpless sometimes because they're in the concrete issues in their mind."
To illustrate that point, he talks about dating. The unafflicted teenager asking someone out on a date might reference dinner and a movie or a walk or dancing. Any number of ideas are acceptable. Someone with Asperger's, however, might immediately leap to a suggestion that is inappropriate, often of an explicitly sexual nature. The lack of a filter can extend to all areas, Malik says.
"They don't realize you don't go in front of your boss and say things other people would not say," Malik says.
Ryan also has no filter for his physical actions, most notably when he stems.
Magic is supposed to act as that filter. Katrina already sees improvement, mostly during his weekly lessons.
"He just really liked magic," Katrina says. "Magicians, their hands are always busy.
: He's feeling much more confident with himself."
When the family learned of Australian magician Tim Ellis, who also has Asperger's, it cemented Ryan's interests.
Ironically, it appears the lack of a filter is what keeps Ryan motivated with magic.
The practice times, as with most 12-year-olds, is inconsistent at times. There are some tricks that receive more attention, especially when they involve a deck of cards. Malik calls these "splinter skills," which develop based on an Asperger's child's interests, as if the mind is distracted by the topic of interest.
"I've seen him give up on things the first time," Katrina says. "With magic, he doesn't give up until he gets it down."
The same does not apply to Ryan's school work.
"It's a motivational issue a lot of the time for him," Mark says.
Ryan has help between lessons. Katrina is no magician, but she knows all the tricks. Her sleight of hand is painfully obvious, and her delivery lacks on-stage charisma, but she's mastered the steps to be Ryan's tutor.
◊◊ ◊
For his third and final trick, Ryan asks for yet another volunteer from his birthday-party guests. His cousin walks forward, and Ryan is already asking her to pick a card. It's his simplest trick, at least from an audience standpoint. The volunteer picks a card, puts it back in the deck, and Ryan finds it. But in this trick, it's the misdirection that needs work. The misdirection relies on Ryan to say something interesting enough to draw the attention to his face, even for a split second.
His choices are often effective, but often he forgets to say anything.
This time, he looks his volunteer right in the eyes and forces her attention to her memory.
"Why didn't you raise your hand when you volunteered?" he demands, maybe a little too forcefully, although it gets the desired effect. "Raise your hand.
Don't just walk up here."
With the candles now lit, the magic show is forgotten, except for a few in the room who know why it was so impressive.
George's shoulders loosen. His focus lessens. He's already thinking about the next lesson.
"I think we need to work on a little of the wording," he says.
◊◊ ◊
Magic may be Ryan's new expression, but video games are his sanctuary.
He has versions of his favorite, "Naruto," on the handheld Nintendo DS, the last-generation Playstation 2 console and the currentgeneration Nintendo Wii.
His entire attention can be invested in the game, but his body cannot maintain the meditative attitude.
In his room, Ryan is a pretzel. Folded into a beanbag chair twice his size, he is literally wrapped around the game controls. His left leg rests on his left arm in some sort of contortionist-yoga pose. Before the positions of all his limbs makes sense, he's already moved again. In the living room, with a lot more maneuvering room, Ryan's movements are a language of their own with no translator. He sits; he stands; he runs around the couch; he throws his hands in the air;
he spins in place, throwing in a half-karate kick for good measure; he stops just in time for round 2 to begin. It's a good thing these controllers are wireless.
◊◊ ◊
This year at school will be Ryan's most difficult. He's cutting loose his safety net because of a desire to better fit in. The resource classes Ryan has taken in the past were tailored to those with special needs. Ryan would rather feel normal.
"Ryan didn't want the special treatment anymore," Mark said. "He wanted to be treated like any other kid."
The teachers outside the classroom, however, may not be as forgiving of Ryan's unfiltered behavior. They have a whole classroom of kids they must teach, and one student's lack of attention cannot jeopardize the education of the rest. It's not the learning that will challenge Ryan; it's the focus required.
"He'll need to buckle down," Mark says.
◊◊ ◊
School is a challenge for someone whose bodymoves involuntarily. Ryan's teachers appreciate him, his parents say, but the other kids have been making fun of his stemming.
He's told them he wants to be physically larger.
"It think Ryan's easily intimidated by other kids," Katrina says.
He can't hide the disorder, but he can withhold its name.
"I mostly don't tell them (about Asperger's)," Ryan says. "My stepmom, Katrina, said that makes me a target."
Malik agrees, but says the lack of a filter can make it difficult for someone with Asperger's to know a friend from an acquaintance or even from a stranger.
"I had a client with a habit (in which he would) play with the ponytail of the girl in the seat in front of him," Malik remembers.
"He got in trouble because he was sitting in a public transportation bus and started playing with someone else's hair."
He's not embarrassed about Asperger's and has spoken about it to a group of 30 or so parents of autistic children.
But, one-on-one, talking to Ryan is different from speaking with him.
The former is impossible, and the second requires stretching first.
If he's not engaged in conversation, Ryan is not listening. Getting his attention requires breaking his connection with the object, person or concept on which he's currently fixated. If he gives no response, it's almost certain he never realized anyone was talking to him.
Conversations don't last long - even if they're long for Ryan. The slightest pause is a doorway to "Naruto" or some other distraction. Back-and-forth is reminiscent of a game of "slap hands." Each person takes a turn - faster, faster or we'll never get anywhere. And when his attention is gone, it won't come back.
My interview with Ryan was the fastest I've ever had. He became antsybetween questions, often ending his response with, "Next question, please," until it became a relay race as we took turns spitting out question and then answer until we were both finished. There has to be a finish, and Ryan is usually the one to set it. George sees it during lessons.
He says he can see when Ryan's mind has drifted to new topics.
It is involuntary, like the stemming. But he's starting to realize that involuntary differences can be enough to alienate people. That's why he's trying to stop himself from stemming.
"It makes me feel good, but it bothers other people," Ryan says. "You can't stem and do magic at the same time."◊◊ ◊
Ryan's biggest trick is happening right now. It may be more like David Blaine burying himself alive than David Copperfield escaping Alcatraz.
Both are applicable. Ryan prefers Chriss Angel.
Every day at school, Ryan is transforming a spastic 12-year-old who can draw attention for what he hopes no one sees into a normal pre-teen who is only noticed when he wants to be, when the magic takes the focus.
He tries the card tricks in the resource area - with the blessing of his teacher - and he has his classmates trying to guess the secrets, which he took an oath not to tell.
"Then I wouldn't be a good magician," Ryan says.
George is cautiously optimistic about Ryan's career prospects, considering his own history. Like any good mentor, though, George wants to see Ryan eventually surpass him.
"He's got enough passion and seriousness to make it a serious hobby and maybe a profession," George says.
Ryan's hopes are high, however, about his future as a magician. His eyes light up when someone mentions Atlantic City. He would prefer that whatever happens in Vegas happen under his name in neon.
News, Pages 1, 6 on 09/20/2009