"Can you come here a minute, Dad?"
"Sure," I said, heading down the hall to his combination laboratory, dark room, aviary, and just plain bedroom. Fortunately it was a big room so there was space for a bed in addition to all the stuff a boy can collect who becomes enamored of science while in High School, and who consummates the wedding with studying electronics in college.
I pushed his door open a little wider and looked in before entering; a trick the family had acquired when Jim was in the Zoological-Biological, or frog-collecting age. "What do you want, son?"
"Just want to show you something," he said, pointing to the floor. He was bent over looking intently at what seemed to be a sheet of that fluorescent plastic that's used for signs. It was lying on the floor, was about two feet square, and was glowing a dim pink. Whether from light within itself, or from the desk lamp, I couldn't tell.
"What is it?"
"I don't really know, Dad, but watch what happens." So saying, he picked up a glove from the desk, tossed it onto the plastic plate. I should say he tossed it at the plate, because it didn't land, but rose fast, straight up! I watched it hit the ceiling with a splat! Where it stuck. It was then I noticed several other things all plastered to the panelling too; the mate to the glove, a package of cigarettes, a cigarette lighter and a golf ball or two.
Well, I had learned years ago in the Prestidigitation Age, or, "You too can amaze your friends with feats of Magic" that quite often Jim would go to great lengths to mystify anybody handy. I wasn't too impressed.
"Next thing will be to make a rope stand up, or saw a woman in half, I suppose?"