Homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-te-loot’-on): Similarity of endings of adjacent or parallel words.
He was plucky. He was lucky. He was cocky. He was crazy.
Graham Wanker was a professional daredevil. He came straight from hell and would do anything anytime he was challenged to do it. Women flocked to partake of his legendary virility. My wife Henny had disappeared into the bushes with him twenty-times—twice a day for 10 days straight. I asked her what they did in the bushes. She said they made things come together every time. She found the reliability refreshing—repetitive achievement was deeply rewarding, like money, or candy, or having a prayer repeatedly answered by God Himself.
I knew differently. Graham was slowly turning Henny against me, trading me in for the Dare Devil—the famous, untouchable, unlimited daredevil. I was blind-eyed jealous. I was so jealous that I came up with a plan to eliminate him—his shiny gel-slicked hair and all. Gone!
I would commit murder by dare. After all, he billed himself as taking any dare. I teamed up with the other town cuckolds to come up with a dare that would kill him. Yes, kill him.
We thought of hundreds of dares, among them: jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a FedEx truck, lighting himself on fire, driving into a bridge abutment. But these and similar dares had been taken and survived by Graham. It was like he had magical powers. We thought, and argued, and discussed. We came up with a plan
We would assemble at Wedgies Bar and Grill and challenge him to swallow the eight ball from the pool table. When we challenged him he laughed and said “Piece of cake.” His confidence rattled us, but we went ahead with our plan anyway.
It was time. Wedgies was packed to the rafters. Graham appeared from the men’s room clad only in bright red boxer shorts and carrying a battery-powered circular saw. We protested when he started sawing the eight ball into bite-sized chunks and swallowing them piece by piece. Between chunks he said I’m invoking the “loophole clause” that is extant in every dare. If the daree can successfully concoct one, it becomes permissible as a way around the “letter” of the dare.
We were angry and distressed, at that point, Mel Turner urged us to just shoot him or poison him and call it a day. But, that would be cheating, so we nixed it and went back to the library to assemble for further conversation.
We decided to dare him not to take any more dares. It worked! Things have calmed and we town cuckolds are slowly regaining confidence that they are Number One in their love lives.
Graham has taken up landscape guarding and does “plantings” during the week when husbands are at work. He earns $100 per job, plus tips for his extra efforts with deep plantings.
Once again, husbands are wondering what’s going on in their wive’s gardens while they are at work.
Clearly, Graham, is thumbs up or thumbs down, the happiest man in town. The rest of us are meeting next week to reconsider Mel’s shoot or poison proposal.
The Daily Trope 