Magic, humor help deliver serious message
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009
By Susan Shinn
sshinn@salisburypost.com
CHINA GROVE ó A guest speaker on Thursday brought comedy, magic and words of wisdom to students at China Grove Middle School.
Matt Fore, who hails from Johnson City, Tenn., spoke about making good choices.
But first, the students enjoyed a 45-minute program filled with magic and lots of laughs.
“There are three reasons for this show,” Fore said. “To have fun, to learn and to get out of class for one period. Mrs. Reece and I are the reasons why you get to slough off for this period.”
The presentation was the culmination of Red Ribbon Month, a drug awareness campaign coordinated by Tricia Reece, guidance counselor.
During October, students heard presentations by chorus teacher Becky Morris on how drugs affect the family, a visit by members of the SAVE tobacco survivors group, a “Think Smart” program featuring female prison inmates and saw a movie, “The Truth About Drugs.”
Students also had the opportunity to sign pledges to be drug-free. Many of the students were wearing red ribbons on their right wrists.
Fore got the audience involved right away, asking teacher Jac Trotter to come forward since he had a $50 bill in his pocket.
“I don’t want to come over there and manhandle you,” Fore told the teacher, who was quite a bit bigger.
Fore asked Trotter to put his money in an envelope. Trotter wrote “Destiny” on it before he did so.
Fore asked Trotter to select what he thought was the correct envelope, then burned the other three.
Unfortunately, the money wasn’t in the envelope Trotter chose.
“Oh, dude,” Fore said. “I am so sorry.”
But the money did turn up in a zippered wallet Fore had in his pocket, in a sealed envelope marked “Fire Insurance Money.”
“Normally, you don’t see a trick that good in a cheap show like this,” Fore quipped. “Can you hear from the rear? I think that’s very odd.”
He pretended to chop off teacher Teri Mills’ arm with a blade that would go “right through her arm.”
“Are you right-handed?” he asked her. “Let’s use your left hand. Do you have severance pay?”
Fore pulled out Rocky Raccoon, a stuffed raccoon, and performed several hijinks with the critter, at one point throwing him into the audience, startling the front row.
Fore called forward teacher Gerry Steedley and proceeded to do a trick that involved combining three pieces of material ó but ended up with what may have been Steedley’s boxer shorts in the mix.
“Somebody check him for a burn mark,” Fore said.
After Fore had made the crowd laugh, he talked seriously for a few minutes.
“If you ask children what they want to be when they grow up,” Fore said, “all little kids want to be something good.”
Nobody wants to be an alcoholic or a drug addict or in prison or homeless, he said.
“I go all over the country,” he said, “and there’s a section in every town where there’s poverty and homelessness. Not long ago, those people were sitting in a middle school and they were young and beautiful.
“That’s the way decisions are,” Fore said. “Making a bad decision will take you in the wrong direction.”
At first, people start taking drugs to get high, he said. Then they take them to feel normal.
Others, however, set goals and make good decisions to achieve them.
“I can’t tell you what to do with your life,” he said. “But if you make good decisions, you’ll get there. If you don’t you’ll flounder.”
Before long, Fore said, students would be making their own decisions.
“Everybody here has got a gift or a talent. You only have one life. You only have one chance. I want to encourage you to make good decisions and go in that direction.”