Recent findings out of Columbia University concluded that “shaking your Magic 8 Ball until you get the answer you want” remains the best way to predict the likelihood of having to do swim team again.
Lincoln DeMario headed a team of social researchers, instructing thousands of kids ages 7-12 to spend the weeks leading up to summer vacation using their Magic 8 Balls to answer the age-old question: ‘Will Mom make me do swim team again?’
“We started the study with a survey to see what questions the nation’s children were using their Magic 8 Balls for,” stated DeMario, in the article’s abstract. “Swim team was unanimously the most common topic. ‘Will I finally get a Nintendo Switch for Christmas’ was a close second. And ‘Will Mom still make me do swim team even if I break my wrist’ was the surprisingly specific third most commonly asked question.”
“My older brother told me Magic 8 Balls are a bunch of BS and that Mom’s gonna make us do swim team regardless of what it says,” reported eight-year-old Maxie Ludlow. “But then I asked my Magic 8 Ball, ‘Are you stupid?’ and it said, ‘My sources say no.’ So I got to the bottom of that pretty quickly.”
At press time, Ludlow was overheard asking his Magic 8 Ball if Sadie would say yes if he “hypothetically asked her to slow dance with me at the Under the Sea Dance next Friday night.”
Published in the March 2024 edition of The Every Three Weekly
Dan Gutenberg 