Erotema

Erotema (e-ro-tem’-a): The rhetorical question. To affirm or deny a point strongly by asking it as a question. Generally, as Melanchthon has noted, the rhetorical question includes an emotional dimension, expressing wonder, indignation, sarcasm, etc.

“Who thinks this is going to go over well? Who is crazy enough to leave bomb in aisle 8?”

I was only a bag boy, but even I knew there was something wrong. Everyone ran out of the supermarket. Aisle 8 was stocked with nuts. The bomb planted there was fitting.

I stayed behind because I was too stupid to think I might be blown up—splattered on the floor and shelves.

The “bomb” was made out of a Planter’s Peanuts jar with an antenna sticking through the lid. It was filled with peanuts. I figured the bomb was buried in the peanuts. I thought if I picked it up and smashed it on the floor it would become harmless, or it might blow up. I yelled to the empty supermarket “What should I do?” A squeaky voice answered “You better get out of here!”

I looked up—it was Archie Stern, the smartest kid for a 200-mile radius. He had won awards—his rubber-band powered golf cart had just won the Arnold Palmer Golfing Equipment Innovation Award. Just yesterday, his Illegal Alien Detector had been adopted by ICE netting Archie millions of dollars. What could be his problem? Trying to sound tough, I asked: “Archie, what’s your beef?”

He held up a cellphone and yelled: “It isn’t a beef. It’s more like an annoying itch. I am trying to draw my mother in to aisle 8 so I can blow her up. She’s a gosh darn pain in the neck, pushing me. pushing me, always pushing me. She goes grocery shopping every day around this time. Soon, I’ll have here within range of my bomb.”

Just then, Archie’s mother came walking up the aisle carrying a bullhorn. Archie told me to get the heck out of there unless I wanted to be made into a stain. I took his advice and ran. As I ran past the cash registers I heard her, using the bullhorn, say “Archie, you idiot, you’re squandering your big beautiful future. Go home and start a new project. If you don’t give me the cellphone you’ll only have saltines for dinner. Give me the cellphone.”

I pictured her standing in front of him with her hand out when Archie detonated the bomb. When it exploded it blew off his mother’s head. Ironically, it landed in the produce section among the heads of lettuce. Archie became a large puddle with bones.

Even in death he was valorized as a genius. He had found a way to make peanuts explosive. A single peanut thrown at an ATM could blow it open.

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

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