I was walking through the park. I had a very bad asthmatic attack. These three asthmatics attacked me. I know . . . I should have heard them hiding.

The humor comes from a collision of meanings around “attack.” An “asthmatic attack” is a medical episode, but Philips immediately reframes it as a literal assault by “three asthmatics,” then adds the absurdly “logical” regret that he “should have heard them hiding.” The punchline relies on the incongruity that asthmatics—stereotypically wheezy and noisy—would be the least likely people to hide silently. The joke showcases Philips’s signature technique: taking idioms literally, escalating with faux-reasonable self-critique, and letting the audience supply the missing real-world logic.