Dicaeologia

Dicaeologia (di-kay-o-lo’-gi-a): Admitting what’s charged against one, but excusing it by necessity.

“I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree. It was blocking my view of Ms. Tuckwiler’s bedroom window. What more can I say Dad?” I was trying to do my best George Washington imitation. My father saw right through it and told my mother. Dad cut a branch off the tree and whipped my butt. It hurt like hell, but at least I knew my view of Ms. Tuckwiler undressing wouldn’t be blocked for another ten years.

My father called me a pervert and my mother insisted I go into therapy and get these “scandalous” ideas wiped out of my head. I didn’t protest. I knew I would always be a pervert, so therapy wouldn’t do anything at all. But, it might be fun talking about my disgusting thoughts to a complete stranger.

My mom dropped me off at the “Mental Changes Clinic.” I was late so I went straight into my therapist’s office. I opened the door and there was Ms. Tuckwiler sitting behind her desk! Obviously, she didn’t know I was her perverted neighbor. This was like a dream come true. Maybe I could talk her into taking off her clothes!

Without naming her, I told her, in the most salacious terms I could summon, why I was there. I talked about watching the unnamed woman take off her clothes and “do things” that were unspeakably sexy. As I spoke, a buzzing sound started coming from under Ms. Tuckwiler’s desk. I thought nothing of it.

She told me I should make an attempt to get to know the mystery woman. If we could develop a friendship, perhaps my lewd thoughts and inappropriate peeping would go away. “Ok” I said imagining how it might be when I showed up at her door.

That evening I went straight to her house and rang the bell. When she answered, she didn’t seem surprised at all. She told me to shut up and get down on my hands and knees. She got on my back and told me to give her a ride to her bedroom. There was Dad on the bed. She said, “Your father is faster and better than you are. He’s the pervert, not you. Get out!”

I was cured! It was like a wave of asexuality washed through my body. I decided right then and there to become a Presbyterian Minister, a calling perfectly suited to a cured pervert. I graduated from Harvard Divinity Shool with highest honors for my dissertation “Who Wants to Be a Big Pervert Right Now?” It reviews the literature of “Off-Sides Thinking” as well as “Being Disgusting” and “Going to Jail on a Yellow School Bus.”

To further my cure, I married Ms. Tuckwiler’s daughter Mary. She’s 18 and I’m 32. It is a match made in heaven. By the way, the replanted cherry tree is only 4 feet tall. It doesn’t block the view.

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

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