Antenantiosis (an’-ten-an’-ti-os’-is): See litotes. (Deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite. The Ad Herennium author suggests litotes as a means of expressing modesty [downplaying one’s accomplishments] in order to gain the audience’s favor [establishing ethos]).
I don’t deserve you baby. You’ve been by my side though thick and thin, famine and feast, high and low, backward and forward, right and left, in and out, smooth and bumpy, rich and poor. Now, I have to add through marriage and divorce. It won’t be easy, but we’ve faced so many challenges together, and now, we can manage the Big D.
I know you didn’t see it coming. Stealth has been my catchword and the Sunset Motel has been my hideout. It has big-screen plasma TVs and room service: a hideout worthy of an adulterer with big ideas.
I’ve always had big ideas, but you never supported me—you scoffed. You drove me away. My portable potty would’ve made millions—an ice chest with a toilet seat. Or, what about the cat mop? A mop handle that you can affix to a cat and use to dust your tile and hardwood floors. You called it animal abuse and stupid. Or what about the floating baby carriage with a remote-controlled motor and steering mechanism. I managed to get a prototype built and our little Lucy had a real high seas adventure with the Coast Guard bringing her back to shore soaking wet, but unharmed! You hit me on the head repeatedly with a folding beach chair. You gave me a mild concussion and tried to convince me that I’m the biggest asshole in the universe. That hurt me more than the crack in my skull.
So, I’ve been seeing Janie the waitress from the Pancake House. We have been having lots of fun. Yesterday, we went for a sunset walk around the Best Buy parking lot. It is a huge parking lot, so we got some good exercise. Janie is so smart! She thinks my ideas are great and can’t wait to try my car registration window sticker scraper made from a cutlery-grade spatula with a razor sharp flipper. She’ll be the first to try it. We’re just waiting for her car’s registration to expire. We call it the “EZ-Scrape.”
Luckily, we sent Lucy to graduate school. Her doctoral dissertation, “Things Compared to Shit” won an award and she’s comfortably ensconced in a tenure track position at some Mid-Western University.
I’m going to burn the house down so you’ll be homeless after the divorce. I was thinking about right now. I’ve got a couple of cans of gasoline out in the car. I’m thinking of soaking all the furniture and throwing a stick match behind me as I go out the door and make my exit once and for all from your nanny negative nay-saying. I’ll pack my gym bag with some essentials. Then, I will fly like an eagle to the Pancake House.
POSTSCRIPT
He lit his house on fire and ran to the Pancake House to meet his true love Janie who he found in the back seat of a Cadillac, making in rock back and forth with a fat man with gray hair wearing a gold Rolex. He knew what he had to do. He pulled his “EZ-Scrape” prototype out of his gym bag, looked at his face in its mirror finish, opened the Cadillac’s back door and gave its razor-edge a test run that nobody in his small town would ever forget.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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