Paraprosdokian: A figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase [or series = anticlimax] is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first part. . . . For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. An especially clever paraprosdokian not only changes the meaning of an early phrase, but also plays on the double meaning of a particular word.(1)
“I love you more than dirty socks.” The first time my girlfriend Gabby said this to me I got really really angry. Who the hell does not “love” anything more than dirty socks? I could love a duck or a mosquito bite more than dirty socks. But, I trusted Gabby, so I thought there might be a back story, that, once told would help me understand the connection between dirty socks and love. In the meantime I made a couple of “I love you more than” phrases, trying to catch the weirdness of Gabby’s. My first was “I love you more than a cockroach’s ass.” I said it to Gabby and she jumped on my lap and started kissing me. It was insane, but I enjoyed it. The next day I tried out: “I love you more than weed killer.” I got a reprise of the jumping in the lap and the kissing, with the addition of a 3-course meal for dinner: cream of truffle soup, free-range boar chops, and mango ice cream. I think it was the best meal I ever had.
Then, I screwed it up, I told her “I love you more than the Amazon Prime remote control.” All hell broke loose. She threw my cherished snow globe at me and barely missed my head, putting a dent in the wall. “You liar! You dirty stinking liar! I hear you talking to Siri in the middle of the night: ‘Siri, show me your Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.’ It is easy to see what that’s about, pervert.”
I was shocked by Gabby’s response, I needed to get to the bottom of things—it seemed there was an inverse ratio between my expressions of love and comparisons used to convey them: the more demeaning the more effective at inducing a positive response. So, to get the conversation going, I said to Gabby “I love you more than road kill.” She blushed and moved next to me on the couch. Then, I said, “I love you more than silver and gold.” She stood up, punched me in the nose, and stalked off to the bathroom and locked herself in. My nose was bleeding. So, I said through the bathroom door: “Honey, I need a tissue for the bloody nose. I love you more than the rotten cold cuts in our refrigerator meat drawer.” The bathroom door opened and there was Gabby with a damp tissue for my nose.
Finally, I was able to ask Gabby to explain her quirky “I love you” thing. We got the vodka down from the shelf and poured a couple of glasses. I had developed a fondness for warm Mr, Boston when I was an alcoholic back in the 90s. I took a big slug as Gabby started her story recounting growing up in Guam. Her father was an Air Force mechanic and her mother was a very inexpensive cut rate whore that had married Gabby’s father when she fell pregnant, knowing that her child (Gabby) could have belonged to 50-200 other men. but, she chose to marry Gabby’s father because he was less intelligent than her and she could easily boss him around.
I took another big gulp of vodka and was starting to fade. Gabby droned on: “When we moved to the US, mother couldn’t leave the whoring behind. Soon, our entire neighborhood was on her client list. When we saw our neighbor at the grocery store, he would grab his crotch and say ‘Wo, wo, wo!’ while he looked at my mother. My mother would tell me he had an itchy infection ‘down there’ that made him cry out. For some reason Dad did not care about mom’s whoring. I would see him counting cash at the kitchen table on Sunday mornings. One morning he looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Now I can get that ride mower down at Penny’s’. I admired dad’s attitude. It was clear that he loved my mother as she was: a whore that made a lot of money. He was grateful for his lawnmower. And of course, my mother was grateful for the lack of physical abuse in their relationship which was a primary gripe among her whore friends. The difference was they had pimps and my mother had a husband (at least that’s what she said). Then, one day out of nowhere my dad said to mother ‘I love you more than a toothache.’ Everything made sense now. My father loved my mother, but not much. But there was honesty in the comparison that ‘moons and stars’ could never achieve. And for example, the toothache comparison expresses a quality of certitude of the love that can’t be achieved with moons and stars . . .”
I interrupted to tell Gabby I was going to pass out and that we’d have to do this again real soon. Then, I threw up on the table. It smelled like Mr. Boston’s ass. Then, I fell off my chair and peed my pants. The last thing I remember was Gabby kicking me and saying softly to me: “You’re just like my father. I love you more than my schizophrenia and eczema combined.”
1. “Paraprosdokian.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 Jan 2008, 03:30 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 9 Jan 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraprosdokian>.
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