Orcos (or’-kos): Swearing that a statement is true.
“I swear I didn’t eat your wedding dress.” Of course I didn’t eat her wedding dress! She didn’t even have a wedding dress. I was trying to make a joke. It could be considered funny if you were really charitable. I was trying to assuage her grief. The man she’d been “engaged” to for seven years had just dumped her. He said she was too old for him. I swear, he is a perfect idiot. I guess, after 7 years she has aged a bit, but they’re both the same age. His new fiancé is seven years younger than him. Perfect symmetry.
I have loved Angie since we were little kids and threw pieces of cat shit at each other in my sand box. Her mother would come and get her and carry her away. My mother didn’t care if I played with cat shit. She spent a lot of time sitting in the window seat drinking hard cider and smoking Luckies. She hated my father and punched him in the stomach every night when he came home from work. He didn’t deserve it. He was always helping his secretary “fix things” in her apartment. It seemed like every couple of days something went wrong and Dad would have to go over to her place after dinner to “fix” it. When Dad went out, Mom would go downstairs and watch Hector the maintenance mad play Sudoku, and sometimes, they would read the Bible together.
I would be left all alone and wrote love letters to Angie to pass the time. I swore that I loved her—that I was telling the truth—I loved her more than my hamster Ed. I loved her more than than Mr. Rogers. As I got older, I told her I loved her more than Jane Russell or “The Benny Hill Show.” I kept saying I loved her and making trite comparisons until I was around twenty-five. I decided to give her all the love letters I had written, and let the chips fall where they may. The “chips” fell into the incinerator in her back yard without even being red. I was about to embark on a new strategy when she got engaged to the Loser King, Reggie Twirly. The years passed and they did not get married—he was like Scrooge, always making excuses centered on his business dealings, like Scrooge did with Belle—putting her off year after year, until things got “better.” Then, Cat came along and knocked Angie out of the running. When Reggie abruptly broke off their engagement, Angie was prepared to kill Reggie. I talked her out of and we made a plan for me to woo Cat away from Reggie and break his heart.
I tried everything, but I failed. Every time I tried to kiss her she would cry, “A thousand times no, I am spoken for by another.” She made feel like Snidely Whiplash, the 19th century cad. So, basically, I gave up on the whole thing. To hell with Cat. To hell with Angie. To hell with everything. I moved to California and started a business as a surrogate love letter writer. I had so much experience, I could whip off a love letter in five minutes. The business was called “Love’s Thunder.” I took the pen name “Cupid’s Arrow.” Business was good. I met a wonderful woman, we got married and we have a baby on the way.
Then, I got an order from Angie. It was for a love letter to me. Somehow, she had my email address from back in the day. It was still functioning! I ignored Angie’s request, gave her a refund, closed the email account and went on with my life, happily married, baby on the way.
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 