The Voice at the Sink

I was standing at my kitchen sink, up to my elbows in dishwater, when I heard it.

“You will meet a woman in Paris.”

It was January of 2015. My father had passed away a few months earlier, and my fifteen-year marriage had ended around the same time. I was not looking for anyone. I was looking for a clean plate.

The voice came again, and here is the strange part. It sounded like my dad. That man spent his whole life telling me exactly what would make me happy, and apparently dying had not slowed him down one bit.

“Mind your own business,” I told him, and went back to the dishes.

In six weeks I was leaving on my first Armed Forces Entertainment tour with my improv group, Four Day Weekend. Eighteen shows in three weeks for our troops in Kosovo, England, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. When it was over, I planned to spend a few quiet days in Paris. Alone. That was the whole plan.

The Universe, as it turns out, does not take reservations.

Ninety Seconds on a Red Carpet

Two nights before we left, we did our usual Friday shows at our theater in Fort Worth. After every show we stand on a red carpet in the lobby and take pictures with the audience. A group of women made their way over, and one of them stepped in beside me. Blonde, with an electric smile that lit up the whole lobby.

In her four-inch heels she had me by about four inches, so she politely crouched down for the photo.

“You don’t have to bend down,” I told her. “You may be taller in those heels, but my personality is six foot five.”

She laughed, the camera flashed, and she was gone. The whole thing took ninety seconds.

The first photo. Ninety seconds later, she was gone.

Backstage, my musical director Ray Sharp asked me something. I had known Ray fifteen years at that point, and he had never asked it before. He has never asked it since.

“Did you think that blonde woman was pretty?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Want me to get her number? I know her sister.”

Across town, at a table at Reata, the sister read Ray’s text out loud. The host in the suit wants your number.

I found out later this woman had a system. When a man asked for her number, she gave him one that was a few digits off. It saved everybody the awkward business of rejection. Her sister knew the system, which is why she asked, “Your real number?”

She thought about it for a second.

“Yes. Give him my real number.”

Her name was Adi. I sent her the most eloquent text I could manage: It was great meeting you. Let’s get a drink soon. She wrote back, I would love to! I told her the drink would have to wait three weeks. I was leaving for Europe.

Twenty-Two Soldiers

The tour started the way all great adventures do. Our plane turned around somewhere over the Atlantic and dropped us back at JFK. The pilot told us we were “heading on up to New York,” as if we had planned it.

Stranded in New York on an $89 government hotel allowance, I did something I still can’t fully explain. I texted a woman I had known for ninety seconds and told her all about it. She wrote right back. We kept writing through New York, through a layover in Istanbul, all the way to an Army base in Kosovo.

Our first show was in the base rec hall. Seven hundred and fifty people lived on that base, and our liaison promised us a sellout. I gave him an A for enthusiasm.

At showtime, 22 soldiers sat in a room built for 150. A pickup basketball game was wrapping up beside the stage, and the clang of weights drifted in from the gym next door. This was not the Bob Hope footage I grew up watching. This looked like open mic night at a roadside bar in Amarillo.

So we did the only thing you can do. We gave those 22 people the best show we had, the kind of show the other 728 would hear about the next morning and regret missing. Seventy-five minutes later, 22 soldiers were on their feet.

Four Day Weekend at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo.

Afterward, one of them walked up to me.

“You’re from Texas, right? Is it true President Bush asked you guys to come do these shows?”

I nodded.

He tapped the name sewn on his uniform. “Take a look.”

It read BUSH.

“My name,” he said, “is George W. Bush Jr.”

I stared at him. “Like the President?”

Like the President. And First Sergeant George W. Bush Jr. had one dream. He wanted a photo, signed To George W. Bush Jr., from President George W. Bush Jr.

Now here is the part I could never have scripted. As it happened, I had hosted Fiserv’s banking conference, twice, and both times President Bush was there. I had met his chief of staff, Mike Meece, who handed me his card and said, “If you ever need anything, give me a call.”

People say that all the time. I never take anyone up on it. But standing in a rec hall in Kosovo, looking at a soldier with the President’s name on his chest, I thought this might be the one time.

“I can’t make any promises,” I told him. “But I’ll do what I can.”

The Knock on the Door

Somewhere on a tour bus rolling through the English countryside, Adi sent me a text.

Peace in Europe, somewhere along the tour.

I’m thinking about joining you in Paris so you can show me around your favorite city.

I had joked about it once. I never imagined she would take me up on it. So I volleyed it back to her. I’ll be in Paris. If you happen to show up, we can have our first official date.

Then Paris it is.

Let me remind you of the facts. We had spent ninety seconds together on a red carpet. Everything else was text messages. Logic would have stopped either one of us. Her sister pointed out, as she dropped Adi at the airport, “Even a great date has to end. You’ll be with him for five days!”

Two weeks later I was in room 23 of a little hotel on the Left Bank called Le Lapin Blanc. The window was cracked open to the traffic on Boulevard Saint-Michel, and I had French music playing so the morning would be as cliché as possible.

My phone buzzed. I’m here!

Then it buzzed again. Two cab drivers are fighting over me.

Welcome to Charles de Gaulle. I told her to go back inside and find a real taxi, and then I waited, and I fussed with my hair, and I waited some more. When the knock came I didn’t even think it was her. Nobody knew where I was.

Adi arriving in Paris.

I opened the door, and there she stood.

You will meet a woman in Paris.

Dad, it turns out, was right. He usually was. We have been wandering foreign cities together ever since.

Paris, together.

The Phone Call

I had been home about three weeks when I remembered my promise in Kosovo. I found Mike Meece’s card and sent him an email. Would the President be willing to sign a photo for a soldier who shared his name?

A few days later, Mike wrote back. The President would be happy to.

I passed the news along to First Sergeant Bush and figured that was the end of it. A few weeks later he asked for my phone number. He had a story to tell me.

When he called, he was talking a hundred miles a minute. The President had sent the signed photo, yes. But he had also picked up the phone and called him, a soldier in Kosovo, to thank him personally for his service.

One email. That is all it took, from a guy who never takes anybody up on “give me a call.”

I think about those two stories side by side a lot.

A woman who gives out fake numbers hears a little voice that says, give him the real one. A comedian who never calls in favors hears one that says, send the email. Neither one made logical sense. Both of us listened anyway.

That is the Why of this whole story. The whisper is real. It sounds like your intuition, sometimes like your father, and it almost always asks you to do something small. A real phone number. A text from an airport. A promise to a stranger. You will never see how far the ripple goes. A ninety-second photo turned into a marriage and two families becoming one. One email turned into a phone call that soldier will never forget.

So when the whisper comes, and it will, don’t tell it to mind its own business. Dry your hands and listen.

The whole story, from the voice at the kitchen sink to that knock on the door in Paris, is in my book We’ll Always Have Paris.

Get We’ll Always Have Paris →

Now, About Your Story

Let me pull back the curtain for a second, because I just did something to you.

You kept reading. You wanted to know if she gave him the real number, if anybody showed up to that rec hall, if the President actually called. That pull you felt has nothing to do with me being a comedian. It is what happens when a story answers four questions.

• Who? A grieving comedian. A woman with a fake-number system. A soldier with a very famous name.

• What? A photo on a red carpet, a text from an airport, a promise made in a rec hall.

• Where? A kitchen sink. A theater lobby in Fort Worth. A base in Kosovo. Room 23 in Paris.

• Why? The one most speakers skip, and the reason anyone remembers your story at all.

Who, What and Where get people in the room. Why is what they carry out the door. Every story has a secret, and the secret is always the Why.

You have stories like this. Everybody does. The night your life turned in ninety seconds. The small thing you did for a stranger that came back around. Most people tell those stories the way they read a grocery list, and then wonder why the room drifts off to their phones.

That is why I built Stand Up! And Speak, my video course on storytelling and confident communication. I take everything I have learned in 35 years onstage and give you the tools to find your Why and tell your story so people lean in, whether you are giving a keynote, a toast, or a pitch in a conference room.

You can watch a free preview, How to Master the Art of Storytelling, right on the course page. When you’re ready, enrollment is $297, with one year of unlimited access.

Watch the Preview and Enroll in Stand Up! And Speak →

The whisper already told you your story matters. Now let’s get you telling it.

David Ahearn