Ara

Ara (a’-ra): Cursing or expressing detest towards a person or thing for the evils they bring, or for inherent evil.

I started hating him right after I first met him. He said bad things about other people that weren’t true. He said my little brother was a “mental case.” He said my little brother enjoyed stepping in dog poop and smearing it on the sidewalk. This couldn’t be true. I followed my little brother to find out. It wasn’t true. Actually, my little brother kicked pieces of dried dog poop and yelled “Five points!” There was certainly nothing insane about that. It is hard to resist kicking a piece of dried dog poop. Great Americans have kicked dried dog poop. For example, it was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite pastimes. Thomas Jefferson kicked a pice of dried dog poop around the entire perimeter of his plantation.

After he impugned my little brother, he went after my older sister. She was 20 and was going to divinity school. She wanted to be a preacher—preaching the Gospel and bringing “lost lambs” back to the flock. I wasn’t that happy with the reference to the congregation as sheep—a docile collective of bleating, hairy animals. But that was ok compared to the rumors he started spreading.

He said she didn’t believe in Jesus!

What was his evidence? He said she was a nude dancer at “Ruckus,” a men only strip club overflowing with sensuality, worship of the flesh, and laced with numerous highways leading to adultery. But this was wrong. My sister was working her way through divinity school—stripping was a means to an end. It did good by enabling my sister to get a divinity degree. Not only that, by being among sinners and miscreants she had ample opportunities to minister to them, even if she was naked and gyrating on a pole: she found them as they were and started there, and brought them to Jesus.

I hated this guy. I didn’t understand why he wanted to make other people look bad. I started the rumor that he wore adult diapers, was a chronic liar, and a narcissist. The rumor is slowly gaining traction. I have a new rumor in the works. I will be releasing it on his birthday.

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

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