demystified

When I was in my twenties and teaching French and English at a private Catholic school in Arlington, Virginia, I saw two girls playing a game during a break. The game was called "The Game of Snaps," and I was utterly mystified by how it worked. Words were spoken in a singsong manner; fingers were snapped, and somehow, as if through telepathy, one partner was able to guess a word that the other partner was transmitting. The whole thing felt creepy and ESP-like to me because, no matter the word being transmitted, the ritual almost always appeared the same. I knew that it was the minor differences, from ritual to ritual, that constituted the differences in information being transmitted, but I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how the hell the game worked.

Well... mystery solved. And now I'm experiencing that simultaneous triumph and disappointment that accompany the demystification of any neat and fascinating trick.

Dammit.