By Dwayne Phillips
Copyright 2026 Dwayne Phillips
The six of them sat in a misshapen circle at the hotel conference center with their eyes fixed on Daniel. Hunger kept Rod from being as attentive. He clutched his new notebook with his left hand while he rolled four pencils through the fingers of his right hand.
“Let’s begin,” said Daniel. “Something simple like, let’s see, what did the zero say to the eight?”
The five others—save Rod who wasn’t paying attention—shrugged and looked at one another.
“Simple,” finished Daniel. “That’s a nice belt you’re wearing.”
The group, again save Rod, grinned and relaxed.
“Notice that?” asked Daniel. “The simplest children’s pun relieved the tension. Want to hear another one?”
The members of the group smiled and gave slight nods.
Daniel paused a moment, then asked, “Notice that? Notice how you feel right now? You’re all waiting to hear the next one, the next joke. You want to know if it is better or older or simpler or funnier. Notice how you are anxious for the next joke or the turn of the page or tomorrow’s comic posted on the side of a building. You are waiting for it. You are distracted from everything else.”
Several eyebrows raised involuntarily. The group had fallen for the joke. They had experienced expectations and suspended reality in anticipation of the next one.
“Good,” said Daniel. “Now you are ready to begin.”
Daniel shifted himself while remaining seated. He made a show of opening his own notebook and readying his pencil by placing its point to paper.
“Now, everyone write or draw the next one, the next joke,” said Daniel.
The five others in the circle paused for a moment until they realized that Daniel wasn’t going to tell them the next joke until they wrote one of their own. They each mimicked Daniel and placed their writing instruments on their pages in their notebooks.
Just on cue as they did so, Daniel lifted his pencil and spoke again. “Notice how that worked? Notice what each of you did?”
The five others looked up at Daniel and then around to each other.
Daniel finished the teachable moment, “A child’s pun and an old man placing a pencil on paper started each of you creating. The simplest things can turn on the creative comic genius. You merely have to notice the simplest thing each day, each hour, each time you need to create. The simplest thing starts the creation when you notice. Concentrate on the notice. Concentrate on noticing the simplest thing.”
The five exhaled in unison. They each relaxed.
“Please,” said Daniel. “That was the first lesson. Write that on the right edge of the first page of your notebooks and circle it. Write it clearly, but small. You each only have one notebook, so please save space.”
“Now,” resumed Daniel. “Back to your joke. I told you one. I created the expectation of another. So, write another. You have one minute, that is all.”
Daniel sat still and quietly counted to sixty. He sighed and said, “Time is up. Please, read me your jokes.”
The jokes were for children. They weren’t funny or original, but they were jokes.
“Q: What do you call a cold dog sitting on a bunny? A: A chili dog on a bun.”
“Q: You draw a line. Without touching it, how do you make the line longer? A: You draw a shorter line next to it, and it becomes the longer line.”
“A boiled egg every morning is hard to beat.”
“Q: What do you call friends who love math? A: algebros.”
The group reached Rod. He sat motionless and quiet.
“Do you have one for us Rod?” asked Daniel.
Rod paused, closed his eyes, and opened them slowly. Then he spoke quietly, “If you must or if I must or whatever, here goes: When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.”
Daniel chuckled. On cue the entire group, again save Daniel, chuckled.
Daniel continued the lesson, “How many of you before this morning have written a children’s pun?”
The members of the group glanced around at one another. No one raised a hand or gave any other indication that they had.
“Notice that?” said Daniel. “You are all immensely talented and funny. With only a simple prompt, you all did something that would bring a smile to a child’s face. That may not seem like much, but in our world today, I can’t think of much else that is as important.”
Lights flashed in the faces on the members of the group. They had done as Daniel boasted about them. They could do it again.
Again, Rod was an exception. He placed one hand on his midsection and twisted his face in pain. Daniel watched Rod closely. No one else saw it, but Daniel noticed a dim glow in Rod’s eyes. Daniel smiled broadly.
“How did you do that?” asked one of the other members of the circle.
“Do what?” asked Daniel.
“How did you get everyone to write a joke out of nothing? I didn’t know how to do that and you didn’t, well uh, you didn’t,” the person couldn’t find the words to finish the statement and stopped.
“Well,” smiled Daniel. “I’m a brilliant teacher, sort of a magician, don’t you know?”
Daniel paused for a moment. “Let’s continue,” he said and he did.
For the next six hours, Daniel pointed the others to things that they already knew. He showed them things they had always seen, but never noticed. Thing by thing, notice by notice, the members of the group found comedy in their world. They each wrote furiously in their notebooks, but always writing as small as they could to conserve paper.
Finally, exhausted in the middle of the afternoon, Daniel closed the day. “Thank you for today. Thank you, each one and all of you. I have enjoyed our time together and learned much from you.”
With a nod, Daniel closed the day’s session. The others stood from their places, stretched their bodies, and walked away.
As usual, Rod didn’t join the group. He remained seated in his place wearing a small grimace of pain. He breathe was slow and shallow.
“How are you, Rod?” asked Daniel.
“What’s the use?” replied Rod with his own question.
“Comedy, helping people notice the absurdity, laughing to forget your troubles, laughing to look forward instead of backwards,” said Daniel. “That’s the use.”
“Please,” said Rod. “I’ve heard it before. The glory of the comedy is to soothe and save man’s soul. Please, don’t repeat it to me.”
“How are you, Rod?” asked Daniel.
“If you insist on knowing, I’m tired and hungry,” said Rod.
“I recommend rest,” said Daniel. “It has been a long day and we all need…”
Rod raised his hand that was clutching his pencils. “Please, stop,” he said. “I’ll try to rest, I’ll try, but I don’t rest well these days.”
“Is there something you want me to do?” asked Daniel.
“Do?” said Rod as his eyes opened so wide as to let the contents spill to the ground. “Yes, there are some things you can do.”
Daniel answered with a facial expression that said, “Okay, I’m listening.”
“First,” began Rod. “You can drop all the pretenses.” Rod paused to catch his breath as the mere excitement of the conversation drained him. “We aren’t in a hotel conference center. Look around you. We are in what used to be a hotel conference center. It’s a pile of rubble. We have been sitting next to a bombed out hotel. We spent yesterday moving charred bricks to clear a space for us to meet. We made piles of junk so we could sit all day and not have to stand.”
Daniel emphasized that he heard Rod’s grumbling by turning his head from side to side and moving his gaze to the extremes to take in the destruction about them.
“The entire city is like this,” said Rod. “The city was bombed a dozen times and all that is left standing is junk that fell on itself and couldn’t reach the ground. Whoever didn’t die in the bombing is dying slowly from drinking rainwater that collects in the sewer and eating what little they can find.”
Daniel nodded to acknowledge Rod’s pain and request that he continue.
“I am disgusted with myself,” said Rod. “I had some food, enough for three days at least, but I traded it to someone who found a notebook in the remains of a library. They also had the nubs of four pencils.”
Rod paused as he gripped his midsection in response to a hunger pang.
“I’m hungry, Daniel,” said Rod. “Hungry. Don’t you get that? Can you tell me a joke that will give me something to eat?”
“We’re all hungry, Rod,” replied Daniel. “I haven’t eaten in several days either. I wish…”
Daniel stopped. He couldn’t find the words to express his wishes for the city, what was left of its inhabitants, and what was left of what they used to call a nation. They had been at war for eight years. The war finally ended a couple of months earlier. No one was sure if they had won or lost the war, but that really didn’t matter. There was no longer what they used to call a government or any kind of system that would bring any relief.
“I wish there was something we could do to bring food, medicine, and shelter. I wish there was something we could do for the stark physical reality of this place and our people,” said Daniel.
“Keep wishing,” grunted Rod.
“I will,” said Daniel. “I will keep wishing. Meanwhile, I’ll do what little I can to relieve suffering. Comedy. Entertainment. This is all I know how to do, so I’ll do it. Maybe in a few days like today I can help a few others to know better how to do comedy. Maybe they can wander the streets and tell a joke or scratch a cartoon in the dust and help someone, especially a child, smile for a moment. Just maybe someone will have hope for tomorrow, enough hope to get through a day and a night.”
Daniel continued, “Yesterday, as I was wandering what used to be streets, I saw a group of teenage girls. I think they were teenage girls. Given the circumstances I have to subtract a few years from what I think the age of people are as we all have aged much too fast.”
Rod’s expression of bored quickened the pace of Daniel’s narrative.
“Anyways, these teenage girls were practicing ballet. A man was paying great attention to the smallest detail of what they were doing. He had placed a board across two piles of rubble. Each girl balanced themselves by placing just the slightest touch of a fingertip on that board. It was quite remarkable to see them concentrating on their balance and their fluid movements. That concentration erased the misery of our situation. It was love, you know. The love of art and dance and movement and entertainment.”
Rod exhaled in disgust, “More la-la-land stuff. Art saves the soul and all that.”
“But let me try to finish,” said Daniel. “There is more. What I found truly encouraging were the smaller, younger girls—maybe four or five years old—who were born during the war and have known nothing else but rubble and death. There were maybe a dozen of these little girls sitting quiet and still just out of reach of the ballerinas. The eyes of the little girls. I wish I could tell you what was in the eyes of the little girls. They had fallen into a world of good and beautiful, and for them that was a new world, one they had never seen.”
Rod rolled his eyes.
“Oh, don’t you see?” said Daniel. “Don’t you see what a dance or a joke or a cartoon brings into this condition of ours? It moves us out of the present misery into a new possibility—a new hope. That it is Rod, hope. You have the gift of hope Rod. I want you to bring it out of the depths of hunger and give it.”
“So what if I do?” asked Rod. “What if I spread some hope and pixie dust on little girls’ heads? Will they give me some food?”
Daniel leaned back and exhaled. He coughed a mouthful of dust and twisted his head so as to start some saliva flowing in his parched throat.
“We, the two of us, may starve to death and not see the next month,” said Daniel. “But for now we can do something marvelous.
“And, my starving teacher, what is that?” asked Rod.
“We can change the world,” said Daniel.
The End