I used to believe that if I cut out a picture of something, it would materialize, but I found out after cutting out a diamond ring, that it wasn't real.

Anon

When I was about five or six, I read in the back of a comic book that you could learn to throw your voice - the drawing showed a man standing there smiling while his voice was coming out of a suitcase. I promptly got out my mom's train case, talked into it and quickly shut the lid. Unfortunately, when I opened the lid again, my voice did not come out. I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.....

oops

At 4, I believed that dice worked by changing the number of dots when you throw them on the table, by some kind of internal mechanical magic. When I first tried my hands on one, I couldn’t make it shift, and assumed I simply wasn’t old enough to produce the force needed.

MG, Sweden

I used to believe it was possible for me to leave a bunch of dominos on a table in a random layout, name a shape, leave the room for 60 seconds, then come back in and the dominos would have magically rearranged themselves into whatever shape I'd said.

I later realised this had worked because my grandparents had been present in the room when I first put the dominos out, and they'd heard me declare what shape I wanted. When I left the room, they of course did the rearranging.

Darren

As a kid I was fascinated and astounded by some of the feats and illusions I saw magicians perform on TV. I am still astounded by them to this day but now know, sadly that their is a "trick" to every bit of magic they perform.

I remeber wanting a Fisher-Price magic set for Christmas and when I got it I was ecstatic. I knew though, having read the books and saw the "tricks" behind the magic that this wasn't a "real" magic set and asked my parents for a real magic set to do real magic tricks with. A dream shattered when I learned the truth.

A part of me still believes in real magic though

Jigg

When I was young and saw an orchestra playing I used to believe the conductor was waving a magic wand and making the instruments play by themselves.

Steve

I would get down on my hands and knees and spin around as fast as I could. I thought I was going so fast, I would look like a blur. I would keep asking my parents if they could still see me.

Liz

I got a 'magic' pack of cards once and all the cards were of the 9 of hearts. I didn't know this and when I saw that they were all the same I thought I had done this and changed them. I remember constantly trying to change them back to normal but it just wouldn't work.

Anon

I used to believe that my grand father was a magician and that he could make me vanish!! I could walk all round the house with no-one seeing me. It never occurred to me that all of the other adults were in on the gag and just pretended that they couldn't see me. i really believed that he had actually made me disappear!

Laura

One day when we were driving to the airport to pick up our au pair my Dad exclaimed with real worry in his voice 'Oh no I'm running out of petrol, quick Alice do your magic - we need a petrol station right now.'
I said 'Abracadabra please make a petrol station appear.'
Less than a minute later we turned around a bend and there it was - I was amazed
After that Dad often asked me to do my magic when we were running low on fuel. He always injected a degree of urgency into the scenario.

It was great - I remember feeling so incredibly special and useful.

I was about 10 when I realised Dad knew where all the petrol stations were
and was 'engineering my magic.'

Alice

I used to believe magic was real. Every time I had a birthday and would be ready to blow out the candles, or had a wishbone to break, I would wish for the same thing: "I wish I was magic." If I was magic, I could do anything, and have anything I wanted, so it seemed like the perfect wish. After about 10 years of waiting, I gave up and started wishing for more realistic things.
Thanks to the Harry Potter phenom, I worry that thousands of similar wishes will be wasted! (I don't really worry about it - just thought I'd share).

Rufus

When I was 6 years old, I used to watch old reruns of shows like BeWitched and I dream Of Jeannie. I came to the belief that anybody could develop powers, as long as you put your mind to it.
One morning, my belief was "confirmed" when the sun shone in me throug hmy window, waking me up. Disgruntled, I thought really hard about making the sun move, and with a wave of my hand, attempted to make the sun move. Well, it worked. The sunlight dissappered. Amazed, I kept waving my hand back and forth, making the sunlight come back in the room and go out. Apparently, my dreams were dashed when I learned there's such a thing called clouds. Funny.

Jayme