Protherapeia (pro-ther-a-pei’-a): Preparing one’s audience for what one is about to say through conciliating words. If what is to come will be shocking, the figure is called prodiorthosis.
I’m am the owner of a salt processing plant. It is called “Saline Solutions.” We manufacture basic table salt, salt tablets, saltines, salt water taffy and a specialty salt for rubbing into wounds. It’s called”Hurt Me.” We sell it on the dark web to S&M aficionados.
Due to President Trump’s 600% tariff on imported salt, my business is going down the tubes. I can’t sell a container of table salt for $30.00!
We are located in Provo, Utah, not far from Salt Lake City. The salt flats are fairly close. I have hatched a plan to save our business: steal salt off the flats late at night when nobody’s around. We will put four bulldozers, along with two front-loaders on two flatbed trucks. We will rent five dump trucks. All this will be provided by “Mel’s Heavy Equipment and Handmade Tacos.” So, our convoy set out the next night, each member eating a delicious fresh taco provided by Mel, free of charge.
When we got to the salt flats we turned our headlights off and cranked up the bulldozers for the operations’s Phase One. The bulldozers made a racket that I was afraid could be heard all the way to Salt Lake City . Then I heard what sounded like a shofar and galloping horses. They were coming toward us, a cloud of dust trailing behind them. My God! It was “The Watchtowers!” a troop of radical Jehovah’s Witnesses with no clear mission. Then, came their Mormon counterparts “The Decaf Dads.” The leader of the Watchtowers dismounted asked us politely to go home to our wives and children unless we wanted to be smote.
We went home.
My plan was a failure. Now, I have lay off 200 employees. I called a meeting of all employees to break the news. I stood up and said:
“Life has its ups and downs. It is like a seesaw, but not as much fun sometimes. Sometimes, it is like an elevator in free fall, cable snapped, plummeting to the passengers’ certain death.
The seesaw ride is over. Almost all of you are fired. Saline Solutions is dead.”
My speech didn’t go over well. I had to run for my life out to the parking lot. Luckily I was covered by a small contingent of the Decaf Dads. They surrounded me, gave me copy of “The Book of Mormon” and I got in my car, and drove off tires squealing.
Since Trump was jailed, the insane tariffs have been abolished. I’m back in business and hiring my former workforce back.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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