Apoplanesis

Apoplanesis (a-po-plan’-e-sis): Promising to address the issue but effectively dodging it through a digression.

I know how you feel, honey. You feel like you’ve been left out of my life when you’re supposed to be at the center. I can account for that and hopefully make that feeling go away.

But yesterday, when I was at the grocery store, I was overwhelmed—overwhelmed by the variety of things they sell—it surely is a literal super market. There is produce—here it is the middle of winter in Central New York, twenty degrees outside, and there are fresh vegetables: carrots, kale, lettuce, string beans, turnips, and more. And there’s fruit: oranges, apples, avocados, and more. And there’s fresh fish—salmon, cod, live lobsters, haddock, sushi, and more. There’s meat—ground beef, steaks, lamb, and more. There’s fowl—duck, turkey, chicken. Then, there’s breakfast cereal, canned and jarred everything—from baked beans to strawberry jam. There’s frozen dinners and desserts, and vegetables and meat and fish and fowl too! There’s milk, kefir, yogurt and juice too. And finally, there are aisles devoted to cleaning and paper products. I’m sure I skipped over a lot. Like I said it’s a Super Market—it’s super and it’s a market.

I thought for a little bit about the trip a fresh string bean takes from a field in Mexico to my dinner table. In Central New York. I was overcome with a feeling of gratitude to the Mexican farmers and laborers, and the truck driver who hauls the string beans for thousands of miles, sleeping in roadside rests all alone—away from home and family, potentially lonely, maybe sobbing when he pulls over to sleep in his cramped cab, maybe watching a little aTV before he drifts off to an uneasy sleep, maybe dreaming of strings beans, maybe being chased by a serial killer string bean who specializes in lonely truck drivers, tricking them into letting them into the truck’s cab saying “I fell off the truck and I’m freezing to death out here.” The naive truck driver lets the killer string bean in.

Wait—this is crazy, but it’s a dream and dreams are crazy. But, oh my God, it’s not a dream anymore. The truck driver was awake all along, but tricked into thinking he was dreaming by the string bean’s other-worldly powers. Now his eyes are wide with terror as the string bean flicks open his stilleto and slashes the truck driver’s throat. The truck driver makes a gurgling sound and dies.

The string bean pulls the truck driver’s wallet out of his pants pocket and gets his address off of his driver’s license. Now, he’s going to drive to Altoona, PA and “pay a little visit” to the truck driver’s wife. Then there’s a flash of light and the string bean turns into a living version of the murdered truck driver with all of his memories and experiences intact. He is a perfect replica of the murdered truck driver in every way.

He kicks the dead truck driver out the door, starts the truck, and heads for Altoona. He gets to Altoona and the truck driver’s wife gives him a very warm welcome, thinking he is her husband. He was deeply moved by her affection. He decided to maintain the ruse and permanently become the truck driver he had murdered.

POSTSCRIPT

These creatures are everywhere. They go unnoticed. If your husband or boyfriend comes home from a trip and seems to have changed almost imperceptibly, don’t be alarmed. Once these creatures decide to “stay on” they make a wonderful life partner—faithful, affectionate, good fathers and providers. Most of them just continue on in the murdered husband’s job.

POST-POSCRIPT

The narrator did an excellent job of evading his girlfriend’s concern by going on a digression that morphed into a far-fetched tale.

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.