Tricolon (tri-co-lon): Three parallel elements of the same length occurring together in a series.
I wrestled with so many likelihoods every day that I was exhausted when I got home from work. I was cranky. I was klutzy. I was jammed. It is hard to synthesize these feelings into an integral whole denoting my end-of-day self. Definitely not positive. I was angry. I was dizzy. I was stuck. It was weird.
As I was thinking about my weird state of being, somebody started ringing our doorbell and pounding on the door. “Mr. Greengenes, I have an important message for you!” Pound, pound, pound. Ring, ring, ring. Why can’t this Bozo just call me or text me like everybody else? Why was he at the door? “I’ll get it honey,” said my wife. She opened the door. There was a whooshing sound and the doorbanger was there, standing in the middle of what looked like a sideways blue tornado! My wife backed off and hid under the kitchen table. I yelled “Holy shit” and stood my ground. The little green man took out a luminous paper-like sheet, smiled, and started to read:
“Mr. Greegenes, I am pleased to inform you, on behalf of the people of the planet Nooboo, that you have been voted the alien most likely to willingly be the main dish at our annual Badda Bing Festival. In return, your wife will receive $50,000,000 tax free, a 75” LG TV, a lifetime supply of Perrier, and an excellent replacement husband. Before I could say anything, my wife came running out of the kitchen yelling “Can you throw in a Rolls Royce?”
This was insane. There’s no way I want to be eaten by space aliens, let alone be betrayed by my wife. I yelled “No!” Everything went black. I awoke to the soft hum of the Noobooian space craft cutting through time and space. As far as I could see, there was no way to escape. Just then, the little green man climbed down from the flight deck. “Mr. Greengenes, I have a proposition.”
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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A video reading of the example above is posted on YouTube at Johnnie Anaphora.
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