Eucharistia

Eucharistia (eu-cha-ris’-ti-a): Giving thanks for a benefit received, sometimes adding one’s inability to repay.

“Thank-you so much for this gold USB cable. It is a fitting tribute to my work in AI and the impact it has had on the golf games of millions of middle aged men. There’s no way I can repay this honor. Thank-you.”

Some guy in the front row wearing a faded Pink Floyd T-shirt stood up and yelled “Bullshit!” The audience gasped and Security headed for him. I was thinking “How the hell did that miscreant make it to the front row?” as he was dragged up the aisle, into the lobby, and out the front door. At the last minute, I realized I he was my wife’s brother Rambo—a nickname he had given to himself. In all my years of marriage I never found out his real name—to me he was just Rambo.

Rambo didn’t like me solely because I went to college. For some reason he deeply resented my education. For example, one time when he was visiting, he took my Harvard diploma off of my office wall and peed on it in the back yard. He yelled “Hey shitstain, it’s raining on your parade!” “Shocked” is too mild a word to describe how I felt.

I asked my wife Ruby what the hell was going on with him, aside from the obvious insanity, there had to be a backstory. She told me that Rambo went in the Army solely for the GI Bill’s educational benefits. He went to war and was awarded a Purple Heart for combat wounds and a Bronze Star with a “V” for valor. Along with the medals came PTSD. For some reason, the squishing sound of a marker on a whiteboard would trigger him. He would mimic talking on a AN/PRC-148 radio and say “Tractor Goat, this is Inkblot, I need a pepperoni pizza at the following grid coordinates, I kak . . .”

His uncontrollable actions were deemed disruptive and he was booted from the community college. Hearing the story from Ruby, I wanted to help him. I completed college on the GI Bill and knew where he was coming from—I had my fair share of problems related to my service and the VA had helped me. I got Rambo to go to the VA for his PTSD. Now, he has coping strategies and the community college has accommodated him, using chalkboards instead of whiteboards in the classes he takes.

Rambo has started calling himself Billy—the name his parents gave him.

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

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