Scesis Onomaton (ske’-sis-o-no’-ma-ton): 1. A sentence constructed only of nouns and adjectives (typically in a regular pattern). 2. A series of successive, synonymous expressions.
Green camo, brown cam, grey camo, yellow camo. Blah, blah, blah. What is everybody hiding from? I see people posing as bushes, in bushes and under bushes. Great way to spend a Saturday afternoon—underneath a bush wearing clothes printed with photos of bushes. I can see these people because they don’t know what they’re doing and have never really needed camouflage except for turkey hunting, and maybe, deer hunting with a bow and arrow. Beyond that, it might as well be a fashion trend enabled by people who like to “blend in,” but that’s hard to do when you’re leaning against your truck or in the produce section of the grocery store. Standing by a bin of avocados, or in the bakery, you still don’t blend in. It is so funny to see a person squatting by a picnic table trying to blend in. But it’s not funny.
“Blending” is the result of a spineless desire to go with flow and conform, and especially, not stand out. As the Blending movement has grown, it has taken root in social reality as the norm—if you don’t blend in, you run the risk of being ostracized and put in the “Federal Camp for Hippies, Poets, and Anarchists.” Outside the camp, things go smoothly, everybody gets along, but there’s no creativity—nothing new, bold, or revolutionary. When I was a kid, something new and revolutionary came to market almost every week.
How did this happen? It was the 3-D movie “Camouflaged!” it was about these three kids who were skinny dipping and had their clothes stolen by the class bully. To get home without getting in trouble, they had to camouflage their private parts with sticks, and vines, and mud, and grass, and moss, and leaves. Naked and camouflaged, nobody noticed. The kids just walked down the street barefoot. Then Dexter, the smart one, noticed something: “You are all naked and camouflaged, acting differently from what you feel, using euphemisms, even lying, to hide yourselves.” Instead of seeing that as a bad thing, the people saw it was a good thing: no risk, no blame, a tranquil trajectory to the grave.
So, “blending in” has become the highest aspiration. If you can’t or won’t, bye bye. As the movement has gained momentum, the scope of camouflage has been been expanded, and the sphere of blending in has widened—you can be the real quarter panel of a pickup truck, a light pole, a door, a shopping cart, a refrigerator, and a million other things. Life has become complicated. For example, yesterday I sat on the couch and injured my sister’s wrist. She was so well-blended I mistook her for the couch! This quality of blending in is admirable, but, you have watch out what you blend into. Two weeks ago an 80-year-old man camouflaged as a white pine tree was sawed in half by a logger. The logger was wearing mandatory ear protection, so he didn’t hear the man’s screams.
Someday, this madness will come to an end. Until then, I have adopted a clever ruse: I am camouflaged as a person who isn’t camouflaged. I am camouflaged as myself.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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