Dendrographia

Dendrographia (den-dro-graf’-ia): Creating an illusion of reality through vivid description of a tree.

In junior high school my best friend had recently emigrated from Ireland. He said “tree” when he meant “three.” It drove me crazy—maybe because my uncle Harry Higgins was an elocutionist at the local community college—every time I saw him he greeted me with “The rain in Spain falls manly on the plain.” I thought it was really stupid. Why didn’t he say something cool like “Ridin’ the train high on cocaine” or “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s amore?”

Anyway, I was determined to get Sean to pronounce “three” correctly. I started by having him count to three 20 times a day, with me correcting when he got to “tree.” It did no good and I became more and more frustrated. I took him to the woods and told him to count the trees in groups of three.

We found a beautiful stand of pine trees. They were part of a Christmas tree farm. Rows and rows of them. They were balsam fir and had the sweetest smell. The trees were trimmed to make them cone-shaped for Christmas living room decorations, draped with ornaments, some obscuring the tree’s nature-grown beauty under grotesquely painted ornaments. But under it all, the tree’s beauty, expressed in green, provides a foundation for the sparkling ornamentation—all made in Japan.

My “being with the trees” exercise didn’t work. Sean made absolutely no progress with the “three/tree” thing. Out of frustration I met with my uncle the elocutionist. I told him what was going on. He told me I had two options: 1. Just forget about it—you’re a part of the problem he told me. 2. Use the Secret Delsartes Method: pain and train.

I opted for pain and train. I bought a taser. I told Sean I would taser him whenever he said “tree” instead of three. Sean desperately wanted to fit into American culture. We believed that conquering his tree/three pronunciation confusion was a key to his assimilation. I started carrying the taser in a holster wherever we went. For a month he never said tree, fearful of being tasered. One day I held up three fingers, sort of ambush style. I asked how many fingers I was holding up. He said “tree” and I nailed him on the neck with the taser.

Sean fell to the pavement and wet his pants. He was twitching all over. He didn’t recognize me when he woke up. He pulled a knife and stabbed me in the shoulder. I ran away.

The next time I saw Sean, he told me there were tree reasons why he didn’t want to be friends any more.

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

Daily Trope is available in an early edition on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.