Eutrepismus (eu-tre-pis’-mus): Numbering and ordering the parts under consideration. A figure of division, and of ordering.
“One, two, three, four what the hell are we marching for?” We were the renegade Boy Scout Troop 148–we were known as the “Bad Scouts.” Our Scoutmaster “Dark Star Smith,” encouraged it. He was an adult, but he acted like a teenager—a juvenile delinquent. He had made our troop into a gang of marauding drunks. We’d light a campfire in the YMCA parking lot and drink beer.
After two or three beers, we’d go marauding. We’d key cars, steal lawnmowers, flip over lawn furniture, burn dirty words in peoples’ lawns, cut clothesline ropes, pee on gardens, and sometimes, kidnap pets—mainly dogs.
We kept whining that we were going to get caught and put in the juvenile detention center where we’d be beat up by the bullies who ran the place.
After we whined for a few weeks, Dark Star angrily said, “All right. All right. The Chief of Police is my father. We’ll never get arrested.” Then it happened.
One night, about 2 weeks later, we were accosted by 20 people wearing balaclavas while we were out marauding. They circled around us chanting “Cut it out. Cut it out.” They were holding the chief of police hostage. They said they were going to dress him up as a clown and drop him off at the mall if we didn’t capitulate.
Dark Star admitted everything to the posse. We were at the elementary school playground, where we were going to tip over the sliding board. We never got a chance. The posse took Dark Star and wove his body around the monkey bars. Crying in pain they exacted a promise from him to change his ways and to stop corrupting Boy Scouts with beer and night time marauding.
Our Boy Scout Toop got cleaned up. I won “Top Scout” at the “Frostbite Frezeree,” the annual winter Boy Scout Jamboree held in Tug Hill, New York where they get at least 11 feet of snow every winter. I got my award for digging a tunnel through the snow to the public restrooms across the parking lot from where we were camping.
On a really positive note, we have a new adult to buy us beer! He hurt his head in a motorcycle accident last summer and is very easy-going. We drink the beer at his house and he just sits there.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu
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