Heterogenium (he’-ter-o-gen-i-um): Avoiding an issue by changing the subject to something different. Sometimes considered a vice.
You want to know where I was all night last night? You keep asking me that question. What is it with you? You remind me of my mother. When I was in high school I’d stay out all night from time to time. I walk in the door at breakfast time and sit down at the kitchen table and ask her to make me scrambled eggs and sausage. She threw a glass of orange juice at me and hit me over the head with her iron skillet.
It knocked me out. She called 911 and an ambulance took me to the hospital. I was in a coma for a week and when I woke up I had a serious case of amnesia. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know anything. I was lost. I wandered around for five months. I spent a lot of time at the playground sliding down the sliding board over and over again. Then suddenly, when I was eating a slice of pizza, everything came back to me in a rush.
I actually remembered my name—Vinny—and my favorite baseball team and what my mother had done to me. It made me mad—real mad. I had been living on the edge of hell—a cipher without an identity or a purpose. I took the skillet out of the cupboard. I was going to bop my mother over the head so she would know what it was like to be a zombie. Then, I remembered.
When I stayed out all night, she never asked me where I was. I didn’t have to explain. She didn’t like that I stayed out, but she didn’t care where I was. That saved her from a skillet over the head.
Do you get my drift honey?
Definitions 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 