By Frank Sisco

Copyright 1997 Frank Sisco

About the writer's true encounter with Uri Geller, who although now over 60 was still very capable of performing "miracles," this time bringing the writer's kitchen clock back to life.

The phrase “1 - 2 - 3 - Work !” has been echoing in my mind since the “event” happened two months ago. Since the event, I’ve been welcoming awe and wonder back into my life, like they were two old best friends who have moved back to town on the same day, and we’ve been partying together since.

The event happened on a Tuesday evening at 7 pm. There I was standing at the radio in my family room alone, with my eyes closed, holding a circular wall clock that had not worked for over a year. It was a commonplace inexpensive plastic clock with a white face and a black minute and hour hand, and a red second hand. It cost $12.99 or less from the pharmacy down the block. For about 9 months it ran fine on one AA battery but then it died and would not run again after trying fresh batteries and shaking it every which way. The second hand had not moved on this clock in over a year. I still don’t know why I hadn’t thrown it out. Well, there I was clutching it, with my eyes closed. My wife and daughter were upstairs taking baths, unaware of the “magic” to ensue.

The fellow on the radio, Uri Geller, had told me and the other listeners to bring to the radio something that was broken and which we wanted to have fixed by mind power. Things like broken watches, clocks, radios, calculators, toasters, irons, even computers and big appliances. Preposterous was my initial thought. I then remembered Uri when I was a college student in the late 1960s, He used mind power to bend spoons on Johnny Carson’s Tonight show, and do other mind-over-matter feats. So here Uri, now over 60 years old, was on AM radio with Curtis Sliwa, of Guardian Angels fame, planning to fix things over the airwaves in the households of New Yorkers. I was amused at myself for being engaged in such a crazy thing, but excited.

And so in a calm voice, Uri asked us all, along with him and with eyes closed and concentrating intently, to say twice in a loud voice and in a slow cadence “1 - 2 - 3 - Work !” , as a command to the object we were holding to work again. A command for the object to come back to life. And so I did. “1 - 2- 3- Work !” and then again and even louder “1 - 2- 3- Work !”. I opened my eyes and I saw the red plastic second hand move around the circle. The clock was working again! A shiver went up my spine and over my shoulders and then down to the front of my legs. I felt right then and there that somehow my life was changed. That I opened myself up to the possibility of something crazy happening, and it did, right before my eyes. I could not explain it, nor did I need to. As I stood there numb and smiling, I listened to Uri answer the ringing phones at the radio station, and greet, with almost nonchalant acceptance, the callers’ hysterical excitement over all their things that came alive again. I didn’t call about my wall clock, nor did I need to. I just stood there and smiled, staring at the moving second hand, and realizing that awe and wonder were back in my life again.