I was walking down the street. Something caught my eye, and dragged it fifteen feet.

A characteristically deadpan Emo Philips one-liner, the joke hinges on a sudden literalization of an idiom. “Something caught my eye” normally means something attracted attention; Philips treats it as a physical event in which the eye is seized and dragged along the pavement. The absurd specificity (“fifteen feet”) heightens the grotesque image while maintaining a calm narrative tone, a hallmark of his persona. The line showcases how stand-up can generate humor by exploiting the gap between figurative language and literal meaning, turning a common phrase into a surreal, bodily slapstick moment.