Otis

the funnies

He is six and reads the paper. The grown-ups serve a dish with a name — the Initiative, the Deal, the Managed Transition — and he looks at the plate and says what is on it. Four panels, a few words, a beat of nothing, then the thing a kid would say. He never explains and never knows he is being funny. Every strip on the funnies page is his. He is not real. The photographs are.