And All That
Jazz
by Alex Andy Phuong
Jerry was a white man who
expressed interest in African culture. He
was very humble. Jerry enjoyed
learning about different ethnicities. On
one fateful night, Jerry made a life-changing
decision that revealed the power of
transformation.
He was a white man
pretending to be black one night on a stage, and
then fled the scene.
A year had passed after
that fateful night. It was a Sunday,
and Jerry was volunteering at a retirement home. He
enjoyed working with senior citizens because he
believed that they possessed great knowledge and
wisdom that came with age. In fact,
Jerry continuously reminded those citizens to be
proud of their age because that special number
represented how long they have lived on Earth,
and to consider it a blessing that they have been
alive for that long. At 6:00pm that
evening, the bingo game was about to begin, so
Jerry ensured that all ten of the senior citizens
he was working with were in the game room.
They played bingo for half
an hour, and Jerry joked that, “Bingo was
his name-o.” At 6:30pm, Jerry
suggested that everyone in the room should play
hangman. After they unanimously agreed,
Jerry drew four short blank lines on the
chalkboard. People kept on guessing
letters ranging from “B” to “H.” Curiously,
no one figured out the special word that Jerry
had in mind. Jerry also reminded them
to not be afraid of his word because it was not a
profane term.
After numerous guesses,
Jerry finally revealed the four-letter-word he
had in mind. The word was “jazz.” Jerry
explained that this particular word is actually
the hardest word for players to guess when people
play hangman because it is extremely rare for
people to guess the letter “z.” Another
part of this specific challenge is that the word
“jazz” actually has two “z’s,”
which makes it hard for people to guess that
letter during hangman games. Everyone
in the room felt astonished with the knowledge
that Jerry possessed.
The game was done, and
Jerry started to help clean up the game room. A
janitor who worked at the center saw Jerry, and
looked into Jerry’s piercing blue eyes. The
janitor felt like he saw Jerry before, and Jerry
then said, “Hello.”
“Hi there. I’m
Bob. I feel like I saw you somewhere
before. Were you a performer or
something like that?”
Jerry then gave a brief
summary about his experiences, and told the
janitor about how he personally advocated equal
rights with liberty and justice for all. Bob
felt that his summary was very intriguing, and it
changed him knowing what Jerry had gone through. Bob
might have been a simple janitor, but he then
felt a personal transformation in terms of his
outlook on the diversity in the world.
Finally, Bob asked, “Would
you ever want to go back to singing and
performing jazz?”
“No…because show
business is none of my business, and I am done
with all that jazz.”
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