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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.”