Category Archives: antanagoge

Antanagoge (an’-ta-na’-go-gee): Putting a positive spin on something that is nevertheless acknowledged to be negative or difficult.

I was an optimist. I could not see the “bad” in anything. I had cut my thumb off when I was a kid. Now I couldn’t hitchhike. No more wandering. No more getting lost. No more being picked up by weirdos in the middle of no where. All good!

My brother glued my butt to the toilet seat. No more falling off the toilet! No more wiping from behind—I went the clean way from front to back. My father unbolted the toilet seat so I could walk around. I became Mr. Popularity wearing a toilet seat glued to my ass—I even met the mayor of our small town Binnville. He told me to stay away from his daughter or he would have the state police assassinate me.

I didn’t listen.

Now, I was a hunted man. Milly (the mayor’s daughter) loved me as much as I loved her (so I thought). She couldn’t explain her feelings for me and the toilet seat. However, she did say that she might love the toilet seat more than me. I found that to be weird, but love is love any way you put it. She liked to hold on to my toiled seat when we walked together. She said she felt like she was steering us toward a happier life. I was moved.

Then the state police caught up with us. They threw smoke grenades at us and we escaped in a cloud of smoke. This was a turning point in my relationship with Milly. I couldn’t risk her life just so she could fondle my toilet seat covered ass. I told her so. She started crying and sobbing very loud. She sounded like a bear grunting. Then there was a bear grunting. It came running out of the woods knocked Milly down and started dragging her away. I faced my toilet seat toward the bear and ran backwards at it. I hit him on the side of the head and he dropped Milly and started toward me. There was a shot and the bear dropped dead.

I looked behind me. It was Snarky Montana. His flintlock was still smoking. He said, “I’ll be sawing’ thiss baby up for dinner tonight. Care to join me?” Without hesitation we accepted his invitation. We had piles of bear meat smothered in wild mushrooms and Black Walnuts.

My toilet seat had come loose in the encounter with the bear. It fell off when I got up from Snarky’s table. Milly grabbed it and hugged it and kissed it moaning and rubbing it up against her own ass. At that point I realized it was the toilet seat she loved, not me.

As life goes on, there is always something to learn and be grateful for. Since the toilet seat fell off, the State Police have ended their quest to kill me. Milly’s been “put away” where she’ll be better off. They’ve mounted her toilet seat on her toilet in her room, where she spends most of her time sitting and wiggling around. Her father died of a heart attack chasing Milly down Main Street the time she escaped. My dad sells a line of toilet seats on the internet—he sells every kind of seat you can imagine, from heated to sandpaper.

So, if a little rain falls in your life, sop it up and wring it out in your toilet.

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

The 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.

Antanagoge (an’-ta-na’-go-gee): Putting a positive spin on something that is nevertheless acknowledged to be negative or difficult.

The most insane spin I ever heard on a bad situation was when my mother was burned over eighty percent of her body. It was my high school graduation party. She was sticking a lit tiki torch in the ground in the back yard when the cap popped off the fuel reservoir and doused her in kerosine, and she caught on fire. My party was cancelled and I was really disappointed, but I knew Mom didn’t do it on purpose, so I harbored no anger

She was in a coma for a week. When she woke up she said, “It’s going to be a long road to recovery, but look at all the weight I’ve lost.” She held up her arm. It used to have a swinging fat roll under it. It was gone, along with at least five pounds. She said, “It was charred so they just snipped it off and stitched it up.”

This was a spinner’s spin! Being grateful for losing weight as a consequence of being a burn victim clearly indicates the value attributed to losing weight in American culture.”I had to have both legs amputated, but by God, I lost fifty pounds.” “I had to have a cinder block implanted in my stomach to kill my appetite, but I lost 30 pounds in a month!” “I have a tapeworm, and the pounds are melting away. His name is ‘Skippy’ because he makes me skip meals.”

Anyway, my mother recovered and is now receiving plastic surgery treatments. She’s having her legs skinned and the skin applied to her face. She knows she’s doomed to wearing pants to cover her legs, but she says “At least I’m getting my face back and I’ll be able to go shopping again without grossing out my fellow shoppers.” Her sensitivity to the sensibilities of her fellow shoppers is admirable.

The worst situation I’ve ever been in was not being able to find a matching sock. It was partially my fault because I just stuffed my socks in my sock drawer without sorting them out. I had a job interview downtown in one hour. I dumped my sock drawer on the floor. I ripped though them, but nothing matched. Then I realized my little brother he played one of his brotherly pranks on me. At least I had socks to wear. Good warm socks. I was blessed. I was sure I would be challenged at the job interview for wearing mismatched socks.

I pulled on my Smokey the Bear sock and my blue, yellow, and red-striped sock. I barely made it to the interview. The first question was “Why are you wearing mismatched socks?” I told him my brother had played a prank on me. We both laughed. He stuck his feet out from under his desk. His socks were mismatched too. “My daughter,” he said.

Needless to say, I got the job. I thanked my brother for mixing up my socks. His next trick was to put a live garden snake in my underwear drawer.

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

The Daily Trope is available 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.