Ecphonesis (ec-pho-nee’-sis): An emotional exclamation.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing Leonard?“ it was my father. I was doing my homework. “Homework, Dad,” I said. I was hunched over my desk, tapping away on my laptop. Our assignment was to write a job description, and then write a letter of application for the job. My job description was: “Wanted: stupid-ass drunk with no skills or common sense.” I thought my teacher, Miss Trank, would find it humorous and give me an “A”, especially when she read the cover letter: “Dear Potential Boss: I am drunk right now. I have had three gin & tonics for breakfast and will be drinking a half-bottle of MD-40 for lunch. So, I am a drunk. Stupid-ass describes me very accurately. For example, I sent away to Amazon for a hammock. The assembly instructions were complicated and I got tangled up in the webbing part.i was drunk so I didn’t care, but my mother cut me loose and and I fell on the ground and threw up. How’s that for stupid-ass? The only skill I have is taking a shower, and I have trouble with that. Apparently, my father is right: I don’t know my ass from my elbow. I have a picture of them with labels hung up in my shower. But they fall down from time to time, if they land face down, I’m screwed. I yell for my dad and he comes into bathroom and picks up the pictures and holds them up for me. Then, I can resume showering. Other than showering, I have other possible skills—well, maybe eating and getting dressed too. But that’s it. On the no common sense front, I can give you a quick example: I go out in the rain with no raincoat or umbrella. I get soaked and have suffered from hypothermia several times. I almost died once when I went camping in my bathing suit. Also, once I threw an alarm clock so I could see time fly. I can report for duty tomorrow. I will be drunk and ready to go.”
Leonard finished his third gin and tonic and started off for school. He staggered across Maple Street and was clipped by a car. He was knocked down on the pavement, but wasn’t hurt (so he thought). He was actually unconscious and dreaming that he was uninjured. A fifth-grader, Billy Wack, poked the crack in Leonard’s head with a stick. Leonard flopped around like a fish.
A crowd gathered. Mr. Topi, who lived on the street, called an ambulance to come get Leonard. He was still dreaming inside his cracked head—dreaming he was dreaming that his head had cracked open and leaked most of his intelligence, which he didn’t have very much of in the first place. Then, he heard a voice say “How many fingers am I holding up?” Leonard saw 300 fingers and fell off the stretcher, a common problem with the Hill Dale EMT team. They were different heights and had trouble keeping the stretcher level. When Leonard fell off the stretcher a small amount of his brain leaked out of the crack in his head.
Suddenly he was being shaken. Miss Trank was trying to wake him up. He had no idea how he had ended up in class. Miss Trank said: “Leonard, I am giving you a double zero on this assignment and you are being suspended from school for two weeks for educational sedition.” I had no idea what Miss Trank was talking about. The crack in my head was healed. I went back to the cloakroom, dug out my back-up bottle of gin and took three big swigs to hold me until the 3 o’clock bell rang.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 