The Magnificent Seven Levitate Like Criss Angel

A few years ago I purchased each child of mine the coolest book I'd ever seen for kids according to their gender. Justin's was The Dangerous Book for Boys and Annie's was The Daring Book for Girls. Some of the contents are the same, such as how to build camp fires, paper airplanes and stink bombs and then some of the content is gender specific. In Annie's book there is a chapter titled, Slumber Party Games.

When I first read the chapter, I was very excited to see that a game I had played as a kid over twenty years ago was in the book. I couldn't really remember how to play just the gist of it, but I had told Annie all about the game and when she saw that the game was spelled out in detail how to play...she just had to play it at her slumber party.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board...this is how you play it:

Have one person lay on the ground, while four to six others gather around her. The players should place the index fingers of both hands underneath the person lying down, and then, with eyes closed, everyone does a call and response, with the player next to the person's head beginning the story: "It was a dark and stormy night." Each player except the one on the ground repeats. "It was cold and the road was icy." "The car she was in spun out of control." "And when they found her." "She was light as a feather and stiff as a board." The last sentence is repeated by the group several times, and then the entire group begins chanting, "Light as a feather, stiff as a board" and lifting up the girl lying on the floor.

Did any of our magnificent seven actually levitate? This game has its roots in a long tradition of unexplainable feats of weightlessness. Saints were said to levitate while in a state of uncontrollable rapture and have a luminous glow and Buddhist develop the skill to levitate with lots of spiritual and physical training. The act of levitation in the modern world is purely seen and understood to be only a magic trick, a grand illusion. But if you ask any of the magnificent seven, they'll tell you...it's no trick.