Comparatio (com-pa-ra’-ti-o): A general term for a comparison, either as a figure of speech or as an argument. More specific terms are generally employed, such as metaphor, simile, allegory, etc.
He was like a bumble bee who’d lost his bumble. He was like a car with four flat tires. He was like Jack without his beanstalk, Mack without his knife, or Old MacDonald without his farm.
Just imagine! Bobby’s wife, who he loved with all his heart and soul, who he had been married to for half his life, who had a lot of money, and who had shot him in the arm and run off with his best friend Eddy, was sending him video clips and selfies of the two of them eating in expensive restaurants and paying in cash—what was rightfully his cash., at least, as he understood it.
But, he didn’t understand it very well. Bobby wasn’t very bright. Being dull-witted was what initially attracted his wife, and it was a good ride for 30 or so years. She took great pleasure in deceiving him financially and relationship-wise. She had had affairs with Bobby’s father, brother, cousin, 2 uncles and grandfather. The affair with Bobby’s grandfather took place in a nursing home until he died from gigantic kidney stones. She thought he was moaning with pleasure when he expired in the woods by the nursing home. It was embarrassing.
When Grandpa died, after all those years of “affairing” with Bobby’s relatives, she decided to go outside the family and normalize her affairs by having them with Bobby’s friends. She chose Bobby’s best friend Eddy because he always talked about “how much” he was getting. She figured he would keep her coochie busy. And he did—Eddy had contracted Viagrania when he was around 50. He had overdosed on Viagra and “suffered” from a permanently stiff tool.
Everything would’ve worked out ok if she hadn’t shot Bobby in the arm. She was a wanted woman now. The police were hot on her trail. She had been captured on CVS’s security cameras buying a half-dozen boxes of lube. She was disguised as Mary Poppins, She was immediately identified as Bobby’s wife by the Manager. It was the fact that she wasn’t carrying an umbrella that initially alerted the Manager, and it was her South Jersey accent that did her in. The police were called.
The police arrived and started to handcuff her. Staying in character, she said “Those cuffs aren’t exactly a spoonful of sugar.” The police started laughing uncontrollably. She pulled away and ran out of CVS. Eddie was waiting. Eddie’s pickup truck burned oil, so they drove away in a cloud of smoke obscuring Eddie’s license plate. So, the two of them escaped. Somehow, they managed to get to Costa Rica, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.
Bobby is sad angry—he calls himself “sangry.” He keeps talking about hiring mercenaries to “go down there” and extract her and bring her home. In his love-induced blindness he believes she was kidnapped by Eddy. All he has is a hole in his arm to remember her by.
This is truly a case where “love stinks.” Bobby would say, along with the J. Geils Band:
I’ve had the blues
The reds and the pinks
One thing for sure
Love stinks, yeah, yeah
(Love stinks)
Love stinks, yeah, yeah
(Love stinks)
Love stinks, yeah, yeah
(Love stinks)
Love stinks, yeah, yeah
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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