Paenismus (pai-nis’-mus): Expressing joy for blessings obtained or an evil avoided.
My car rolled over four times and caught on fire at the bottom of a ravine on Rte. 80 outside of Elko on my way to Salt Late City. I was going 109 mph—sunny day, dry pavement, unlimited visibility. I was haulin’ ass.
I worked for Morton Salt as a good-will ambassador, mainly at shopping malls in Nevada where I hand out salt shaker key rings and packets of salt. I also give away T-shirts imprinted with the Morton Salt logo. I had a company car, It was a two seater modeled like a salt shaker. It is built on a Corvette frame, with a Corvette engine.
I’d made the Salt Lake City run a hundred times without incident. Now my company car was a smoking twisted wreck and I was in the hospital. The Doctor laughed when he told me my whole body was broken. Although he was kidding, he was close.
I was lucky and grateful to be alive. I should’ve been dead and mangled like my car—looking like just another piece of roadkill stretched out on the road shoulder. But I wasn’t. I was in a hospital bed wearing a plaster sheath. My mouth and eyes and one hand showed and there were tubes inserted up my ass and penis. If I needed a nurse I was supposed to yell “Help!”
Some high school girl read to me. She was a volunteer and she told me all about how she was going to make the world “a better place for you and me.” She read Nancy Drew mysteries to me. They made me sick so I had her removed. She was replaced my a recovering alcoholic named Bitsy who told me stories about her fall from grace and lewd behavior when she was drunk. I loved it. Her stories lifted my spirits. My appetite improved and I wanted to go back to my former life. Bitsy understood and invited me to live with her. Then, unsuprisingly, I was told I was fired from Morton Salt.
I was devastated. I cried and cried. Then Bitsy recommended that I start my own salt company. I got a loan from my father and did it as soon as I was well. We named it “A Salt Gourmet Salt Company.” We leased a half-mile of the Great Salt Lake shore line and went into production.
I married Bitsy. She drowned in the tub one night when she was drunk. I inherited her considerable fortune and stopped making salt.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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