BALANCE’s Satire and Humour Writing Workshop
This spring, students in Sophie Kohn’s eight-week humour-writing workshop explored the art of satire—learning to tackle social and political issues with sharp, thoughtful humor. With a focus on unpacking the everyday realities of ableism, they developed their own comedic voices and crafted pieces that are both funny and insightful.
A Cautionary Tale by Judith Lawrence
I am an iPhone 13, and I have a tale to tell.
My human loves me and I treat her very well. Why then, did she murder me?
Let me set the stage:
1. A condo on a busy Toronto street with many buildings over 25 storeys high.
2. My anxious, elderly, vision-impaired human who can’t quite move beyond using email and telephone.
3. The 70+-year-old techy guy who comes to the rescue whenever the digital world overwhelms older folks
So. I’m minding my own business one day when all hell breaks lose. My human can’t find me and calls techy guy to help. Luckily, my friend iPad is closeby and Find My Phone is available.
“OMG,” techy guy says. “It looks like your phone is on the street. We even have an address. You must have dropped it?”
“No way,” says my human. “Someone must have stolen it! Maybe the culprit is still there!”
Just like in those movies with aging actors chasing the bad guys, my human and her techy friend bumble out of the condo and search the busy street. I don’t think the white cane my human uses to navigate was of much use. According to the map, I was moving all around the street. Now my human really starts to panic.
“Let’s call the police and report a break and enter,” she says. Apparently she left her condo door open to go put the garbage down the chute earlier today. She quickly becomes convinced that there must have been an intruder on her floor who dashed into her apartment and grabbed me in one fell swoop.
My human promptly calls the police and gets admonished for leaving her condo door open. The police tell her to write up a report online.
“But my phone is just outside! I know it for a fact!” she exclaims. “Find My Phone says so!”
And that’s when it happens: techy guy suggests they just do the deed and disable me completely.
My guts are suddenly wretched out and all my lovely apps vanish. I’m a goner. At least my human mourns me and develops a headache to boot. I, of course, am dead as a doornail.
And that’s about when she heads into her bedroom and finds me in rigor mortis on her pillow. After techy guy leaves, of course. Otherwise, what would techy guy have thought?! My human’s way too prudish for that.
So, what the hell happened?! I blame cell phone towers, a wild imagination, and too many crime shows. I’m happy to say I’m now reconstituted. I only lost a thousand emails and all my accessibility apps, but I am slowly recovering. Maybe I should move to the country where there are fewer cell towers.
Why no one realized those moving points on the iPad map were all those cell towers talking to each other, I’ll never know.