How I Became a Magician

I was nine years old when magic found me.

I wasn’t interested in sports, and I never felt drawn to the talents other kids seemed to chase. I played instruments, I loved skating, I had many hobbies, but none of them felt like mine. None of them felt like a calling.

Then one night, everything changed.

I was having dinner with my family at a restaurant when a man approached our table and asked,
“Can I show you something?” He lit a cigarette, placed it into his bare hand… and it vanished.

Completely. Effortlessly. Like the world had paused for a second and rewrote itself.

My life shifted in that moment, you can feel those rare seconds when the future cracks open for you. I knew instantly that magic was what I wanted to do. Not just to learn tricks, but to create in others the same feeling I had just experienced: that sense of wonder so pure it makes you forget everything else.

When he finished, my father stood with me at his side and said, “My son wants to learn magic. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Just teach him a few things.” The magician refused. Not rudely. Not unkindly. He simply said no, that teaching wasn’t something he did.

I was heartbroken. I remember sitting in the car afterward, crying quietly while my dad drove. The internet was barely anything back then slow, limited, but he was determined to help me. We searched together for books, lessons, anything that could show me the real secrets behind art.

That’s when we found it:
a professional magic course.

Not a toy kit. Not a beginner set. A real course used by real magicians. The price was a thousand dollars — in 1999. At nine years old, even I understood that a thousand dollars was enormous. I didn’t dare ask. I didn’t say a word. I just stared at the screen and let the dream fade a little.

Then my father smiled and said,
“Let’s buy it.”

I started crying and I hugged him and didn't let go. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. My mom and my sister were just as supportive. They knew how much magic meant to me. They saw the light in my eyes. And from the second that course arrived, through the years all three of them helped me become who I am today.

 I practiced endlessly, morning, afternoon, night, performing the same magic over and over again for them. I must have driven them absolutely crazy. They watched every routine, every attempt, every failure, every improvement. They understood that I was a perfectionist, even as a child, and they gave me the space and patience I needed to grow.

They didn’t just support my dream.
They helped build it.

As the years passed, I grew up. 
I created haunted houses, anime and comic conventions, and even a Star Trek event.
I became an event producer, a creator. 
And at the same time, I performed magic for high-end clients across Puerto Rico, the United States, and different parts of the world.

Magic has been with me through every chapter.
Not as a hobby. Not as a job. But as the thread that ties my life together.

It is everything to me, my purpose, my craft, my calling.

And if there’s one truth I carry with me, one sentence that defines everything magic has given me, it’s this:

A lifetime wouldn’t be enough to repay the art of magic for what it has given me.