Oxymoron

Oxymoron (ox-y-mo’-ron): Placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to one another. A compressed paradox.

“Jumbo shrimp.” We’ve all heard it before. But what about “jumbo molecules?” Never! No! Uh huh! Why not ? Because it is stupid—brilliantly stupid! Maybe, flawlessly stupid. Can something be brilliantly stupid? Yes, if I say so. What about combat hamster? No. It may capture the ethos of a fighting hamster—but it doesn’t have the faraway ring like rubber ducky or honest hoax or nutty whistle. How about “tough love.” Oh yeah, it puzzled the hell out of me when my parents practiced it on me. The only part that seemed tough was having to tie my own shoes. The love part was beyond me. I guessed it was because they yelled at me softer at night so they wouldn’t wake up my sister, who was a model human being except for stealing money from mom’s wallet. It was hard to live with, but she was my sister. To get back at her I put fire ants in her pants when she was asleep one night.

I could tell when she put her pants on: she screamed and stomped her feet and came running down the stairs with no pants on, and jumped in the back yard swimming pool. Of course, she blamed me. I was ready. I had a counterfeit article titled “Fire Ants Invade Homes, Inhabit Pants.” Siri wrote it for me so it seemed real—it was really fake, perfect for my needs. My parents bought it and told my sister to shut up or leave home.

My sister shut up, but she made a plan for revenge. She had recruited her boyfriend Lloyd to knock me out with some kind of illegal drug and tattoo a pile of shit on my forehead. Lloyd was ready, but he had last-minute doubts about doing something so obviously evil. Instead, he tattooed a picture of the Dali Llama on my ass. I was extremely grateful. It was captioned “It’s All In Your Head.” The caption’s written backward and forward so I can read it when I look at my ass in the mirror. My girlfriend loves it and pets the Dali Llama whenever she has a chance.

My sister and I have mended all our fences. We get along so well, we can’t go wrong. We fence stolen goods and sell them at the flea market each week. Selling stolen goods is a little risky, but my sister’s new boyfriend is a policeman–a Captain in the Bolder Police Force. He keeps the “snoops” away from our operation and we’re flourishing. Our business motto’s “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.” It’s a little risky, but we like it.

We’re headed to Florida for a winter break. We’ll be eating tons of “jumbo shrimp” and downing many, many beers. I hope I’ll meet a hot cool girl.

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

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