Hysterologia (his-ter-o-lo’-gi-a): A form of hyperbaton or parenthesis in which one interposes a phrase between a preposition and its object. Also, a synonym for hysteron proteron.
I had fallen, without warning, down a blowhole! It was the same dream I’ve had over and over again. I am pirouetting on the back of a whale. I am ecstatic. My tu-tu goes up in flames. I panic and trip over a barnacle and fall down into the blowhole. My mother is already down the blowhole wearing a two-piece bathing suit and sunglasses and a huge diamond ring. She reaches out to me making hand signals I don’t understand. She says “It’s all right little Poo-Poo” and winks. My tu-tu’s fire goes out, I reach out, and start toward her. The whale’s belly is filled with objects that I have to climb over to reach my mother. The first is my father, passed out with an empty gin bottle nearby. I jumped over him without a problem and landed in a shopping cart filled with packages of jiggling liver. I stood up and fell over backwards, landing on a wedding dress made out of zip-lock freezer bags. I stand up and am poised to embrace my mother and then, at that moment, the whale blows me with great force out its blowhole. I can hear my mother laughing as I am blown into the sky.
Now I am sitting in an airliner, dressed normally, and accompanied by my comfort pet Calliope the parrot. Luckily she’s staying quiet. Uh oh! She’s ruffling her feathers. She straightens up. Loud and clear she says “We’re all going to die.” A steward grabs her cage and runs to the back of the plane. There’s a sickening gurgling sound. The steward comes back with the cage with dead Calliope lying on his back in the bottom of the cage. Suddenly Calliope jumps up on his perch and says “We’re all going to die!” This process repeats itself at least ten times, until we land in Ecuador—at Quito. Calliope is dead, so I leave her on the plane.
Now I’m wearing warm weather clothes. As we’re standing in line to clear customs, my shorts fall down. The woman behind me in line snaps my underpants waistband. I pull up my shorts and turn around and look at her. It is my blue-haired grandmother who is supposed to be locked up for life in New Jersey for sabotaging a ski lift and killing 25 people. When asked why she did it she said: “Colorado is for skiers.” She was judged “somewhat insane” but not enough insane to get her off the hook. I looked at her and she said: “Colorado is for skiers.” “What? I said. She said “Read my lips! Colorado is for skiers!” That did it! I swung my suitcase at her head and she evaporated. I was quite embarrassed by the whole thing. I clicked my heels and said “I wish I was in New Jersey.”
Suddenly, I’m in Boonton. I am working for a company that pumps out grease traps. I love my job. I smell like cooking oil.
I wake up. As usual, I am not in New Jersey. I wake up on the back seat of my car out in the woods somewhere in the USA. There’s a guy with an orange vest that says “Search Party” on it. He has a hotdog in one hand and a beer in the other. He’s smiling and he raises his beer and says, “We’re all going to die!” I hope this is a new dream as I sit there in my car’s back seat waiting to die.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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