Dehortatio (de-hor-ta’-ti-o): Dissuasion.
Her: This is the most ridiculous afternoon I’ve ever spent. I never even thought about “spending afternoons” until today wandering around in the woods with headphones on and carrying this stupid metal detector, looking for buried treasure. My arm is tired from sweeping the ground, and I’m getting cold. I want to go home! Now!
Him: Now now honey. I can almost smell the gold. Like I said, they say pirates buried treasure in these woods. Nobody believes the story, so the gold is here for the taking!
Her: You will believe anything! Guess where the nearest ocean is. 1,000 miles! Do you think the pirates put wheels on their ships and drove them here, to Kansas? Why didn’t they bury their treasure somewhere along the Jersey shore, like Cape May? Come on. Let’s go home and return to sanity. I’ll make your favorite lettuce, anchovy, apple and American cheese pizza and we can sit by the pool and forget about this treasure nonsense. Come on! Shut off your metal detector.
Him: Ha ha! You’re so funny. I’m not buying it. If I gave up on everything you wanted me to give up on, we’d still be living in the pup tent in Buffalo Roam State Park. If it hadn’t been for me, we’d still be there, rummaging trash cans in the picnic area and stealing food from other campers. If it wasn’t for winter’s onset and the prospect of freezing to death, we never would’ve left and I never would’ve bought that winning lotto ticket with our only dollar, and we wouldn’t be multi-millionaires now. So, shut up and keep sweeping.
Just then, his metal detector went wild. It sounded like an ambulance on its way to a 911 call. He pulled out his spade and started digging, while she continued nagging him to go home. He hit wood with his spade and dug around it. It looked like a plank. It was their property, so they called in an excavator to dig up whatever it was.
As the dirt cleared, what looked like a wooden ship started to emerge! It was remarkably well-preserved, and it had wheels. He climbed onto the deck and ripped open the hatch cover. Looking down into the hold, he saw the dull yellow glint of gold—bars of gold. Hundreds of bars of gold. He heard a voice: “Hey matey! I been waitin’ for you. It seems just yesterday I set off in my wheel ship to make the trek overland with my crew and my treasure, headed where nobody would look for it. We had a 20-mule team pullin’ her. This spot is where the mules gave out. We dug a ship-size hole, and rolled her in. Then, I invited my crew one by one to join me in the ship’s hold for a glass of rum. As they climbed down the ladder, I ran each one of them through. After I killed them all, I went back on deck to figure how to finish covering up the ship.
A garden gnome walked out of the woods. They were sort of like wardens watching over the woods. The gnome asked me what I was up to and I told him ‘Non of your business pee wee.’ As soon as the ‘wee’ came out of my mouth, I knew I was in trouble. His little red pointy hat started spinning around on his head and smoke was coming out of his ears. Needless to say, he put a powerful gnome-curse on me: to stay in the ship’s hold until somebody found me. I climbed back down into the hold and a gang of gnomes filled the dirt on top of it, leaving no trace that anything was buried there. But, here you are! I’m free! I’d be happy to take that naggin’ wife offa your hands—I could hear her all the way down here. I been down here alone for a hundred years or more and I’m desperate for the company of a woman, even if she’s a pain the the stern.”
He stood there in shock. He helped the pirate out of the ship’s hold. His wife was standing waiting.
Pirate: Argh! Shiver me timbers! Blow me down! Avast! It’s me old lady, Moanin’ Mary. I thought I put a bullet between your eyes on our wedding night, just for sport.
Her: Captain Billy Nail! It can’t be you! I still love you! I still need you! You were always reckless and did weird things for fun. I’ve been living here as a “Ghost First Class” ever since you shot me in our bed at the “Crimson Nose.” This piece of crap standing here is my 12th husband. Take me away from this poor excuse for a man. Take me back to the wind, and the spindrift, the raids, and the smell of hot blood staining the decks!
He was stunned and scared out of his wits. He’d been married to a ghost pirate woman all these years. She didn’t smell. He couldn’t see through her. She didn’t cackle. She just nagged the hell out of him. And now he knew that the round scar between her eyes wasn’t from Chicken Pox. He ran home faster than he ever had run in his entire life, leaving the two of them behind. What should he do? Call 911 and tell them there was a pirate ghost that his ghost wife knew from a prior life, and they were getting ready to run away together! This was insane! He’d just have to let them run off together and rekindle their blood-sloshed romance. He would save big-time on attorney fees and alimony. He felt pretty good about that.
First thing in the morning he went back to the ship to figure out how to get the gold out of it. When he got there, the ship was gone, along with his wife and Captan Nail. There were wagon wheel tracks that ran about 100 feet from the now-empty hole, and then, disappeared.
As he headed back home empty-handed, he felt better than he had in 20 years—that was when he had met “Mary” standing in line at Long John Silver’s.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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