Horismus

Horismus (hor-is’-mus): Providing a clear, brief definition, especially by explaining differences between associated terms.

“Love is not liking. Love is not doing it with another person. Love is not wanting. Love is not giving or receiving gifts. Love is not promising to be faithful. Love is not anything at all. If it is anything, it is a fool’s trap. A major con job. A joke that causes despair, and suffering, and pain.” This was Miss Eve Macintosh teaching our fifth grade health class. This week’s topic was “Love Stinks.”

Miss Macintosh’s boyfriend, Chip Wild, had been gruesomely murdered. He had been clubbed, stabbed, shot and run over. The police said the person who did it was deranged and filled hatred for Mr. Wild. He had a note pinned to his blood-soaked shirt that said: “You prick.” it was made out of letters cut from a magazine, like a ransom note. It was the worse thing that ever happened in our little town—Coal Town was aghast. People came from all over to see the blood stains on the sidewalk in front of Miss Macintosh’s house. People pitied Miss Macintosh, having her boy friend killed right in front of her house. They found the murder weapons in her kitchen where she put them for safekeeping until the police arrived. Chief Pesto expressed his gratitude for her community spirit and bravery.

Miss Macintosh didn’t go to Chip’s funeral. We understood how sad she was and how she couldn’t handle the pain. There were a half-dozen young women at the funeral who cried enough to make up for her not being there. Everybody was grateful.

They caught Lewis Other later that week. He was lurking around the crime scene with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing his liberal Blundstones, and his expensive Cartier wrist watch with a crocodile skin band. He was drinking a “Pink Lady Apple” Kombucha. Everybody knew he was a liberal, and the liberals were all murderous psychopaths who would lash out at right wing conservatives, unprovoked. They wanted to burn down churches, and “save” the environment, and tear down shopping malls and turn the parking lots into gardens of rare and endangered weeds. Chip Wild was Lewis Other’s opposite. Chip wanted to legalize hunting illegal immigrants, drill for oil in everybody’s back yard, require watching 2hrs of Fox News every day, beat up homeless people, place Bibles in all public restrooms, and build a meth lab in the high school’s chemistry classroom, and more. In short, Chip was one of us, Lewis was one of them.

Lewis was arrested at the crime scene. He was chained with a dog collar around his neck and paraded to the police station with cheering crowds lining the street. He was booked and thrown into a cell with the local nutcase, Pluto LaForge. One of the arresting officers had super glued a sign to Lewis’s back saying “Kick Me, I Murdered Chip.”

Coal Town had sold its courthouse in a bankruptcy settlement. Lewis’s trial was held on the High School football field. He couldn’t afford a lawyer, and bankrupt Coal Town did’t have the money to provide him with one. The remaining funds had been used to lease the mayor a new Cadillac.

Lewis Other was convicted of murder by a jury of Chip’s best friends and sentenced to be hanged. He was hanged later that day from a big oak tree in the town square. He climbed up on a bar stool with the rope around his neck. Miss Macintosh kicked the stool out from under him. He was wearing no bag over his head so you could see his stretch and hear it go “Pop.” It was gross, but justice had been served.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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