Enallage (e-nal’-la-ge): The substitution of grammatically different but semantically equivalent constructions.
“Go baloney.” I said this to myself when it was time to lie. I was such a liar that my friends called me “Don the con.” I told at least a dozen lies every day. Most recently, I lied about my IQ. I told my friends that I’m a genius, that I was being inducted into MENSA next week. I told them my IQ is 220. I figured this was high enough to make me a genius.
Of course, given all the stupid things I’ve done, nobody believed me, but nobody laughed at me. I had inherited millions of dollars from a mystery trust fund and all my friends hoped to get a piece of it when I die, especially since I told them I was estranged from my entire family, all the way down to the most recent newborn. It was a lie—I had no family. The joke was on them! I was leaving all my money to a used car salesman—Honest Sal—who had a car lot on the outskirts of town, adjacent to the oil refinery. He dressed like a pimp, spoke a hundred miles an hour, and lied like crazy about his cars and everything else. When we first met a black Cadillac on the front of the lot caught my eye. I pulled over and got out of my car.
Sal came running over, shook my hand and said “howdy dowdy” over and over, his gold tooth glittering in the sun. He said “You’re interested in Ho Chi Minh’s limo? It’s a shame. His son fled Vietnam in it after a falling out with his father. He drove the limo to Cambodia and eventually made it to Thailand. He had it shipped to Los Angeles. He went broke after a year of debauchery and sold it at auction to raise funds to start a Vietnamese/Asian grocery store. I picked up the limo at a junkyard in Joliet, Illinois where it was about to be crushed into a block of steel and sold for scrap. After some minor cosmetic work, I put it out here on my lot. It’s for sale for $900.00, or, $850.00 if you pay cash.”
After I purchased Ho Chi Minh’s limo, Honest Sal and I became friends. I would drive out to his lot and we’d sit in his office telling lies to each other. I told Sal I had three balls. He told me he had three brains. I told him I was raised by poisonous snakes in a cave in Maine. He told me he had six dicks. No matter how outrageous a given lie was, we pretended we believed it and asked respectful questions as if it was true. For example, when he told me he had six dicks, I asked him if they were like a cow’s udders. I also asked him if he had a choice about which one became erect when he had sex, or if it was just random.
He told me the dicks weren’t like a cow’s udders. There was a dominant dick that did the peeing naturally with no squeezing necessary. As far as the erection went, he told me it was always a surprise and enhanced the activity.
You can imagine what passed between us in Honest Sal’s office every afternoon! We left reality behind. Our lying together was the soul of our friendship—so much imagination—so much creativity went into our lies.
One day, I told Sal I came from another planet. He asked me questions like: “Do you like plant Earth?” “Do you have a rocket ship hidden somewhere?” “What is the name of your planet?” “What do you eat of your planet?” I answered each question truthfully, but Sal didn’t know it. For example, I told him on my planet I eat “Pangle” a small iron-based organism that we ingest through pores in our armpits. We also have something roughly like fruit. It is called “Vibop.” It is about the size of a grape. When we sit on it, our digestive tract reverses direction and sucks in the “Vibop” through what is called the “anus” on Earth.
After I answered about ten more questions, Sal just sat there with his mouth hanging open, shaking his head. He pushed his chair back. He said: “You really are from another planet! Holy shit!” I tried to talk him out of his belief. My attempts to change his mind were lies and he knew it. He was getting angry. I erased his memory with my pang-pen. I left his office, and jumped into my black Cadillac. I pressed the glove compartment button and the engine fired up. I pulled on the steering wheel and the Cadillac took off like a bat out of hell.
I had done my time on Earth.
The retrofitted Cadillac shot through Earth’s atmosphere. It was pre-programmed to take me home. I couldn’t wait to sit on a Vibop and listen to my favorite music “Gamma and the Four Rays.” So relaxing.
On Earth, I had almost forgotten how to tell the truth. It was vexing, but now I’m headed home.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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