Category Archives: aposiopesis

Aposiopesis (a-pos-i-o-pee’-sis): Breaking off suddenly in the middle of speaking, usually to portray being overcome with emotion.

I was riding my electric bike. Humming down the highway of life, I felt the wind in my hair and my pants flapping around my legs—like a pants leg massage, keeping me limber, although the electric motor made it unnecessary.

I was rolling along at 3 MPH, the landscape a flying blur. I was on my way to Home Depot to buy a clamp. I wasn’t sure how it would work. I was thinking that maybe a nail or a screw would work just as well, but I did’t have a screwdriver or a hammer. It had to be a clamp.

The door jamb to my upstairs bedroom closet had come loose and the doorknob had stopped working. It took too long to get a shirt out of my closet.

Suddenly the battery went dead on my bike. Its big fat tires made it nearly impossible to pedal manually. I was in front of Mrs. Breenlap’s house. She was always really friendly to me so I figured I would ask if I could charge my bike up in her house. She told me it was ok, but I had to take off my shoes before I came inside. I complied.

When I got inside a man wrapped the charger wire around my wrists and told me to stand with my nose against the wall. He handed me two string beans and told me to stick them in my ears. I couldn’t do it with wired wrists. Mrs. Breenlap apologized for the man’s behavior and told me he had invaded her house 2 years ago and wouldn’t leave. She told me he was harmless as he pulled the clamp out of the Home Depot bag. He clamped my legs together and pushed me down. He covered me with a blanket and ran out the door. Mrs. Breenlap yelled “You, you look. . .” She helped me up and untangled the wire from my wrists. We sat on the couch waiting for my bike to charge. She told me to put my head between her legs and make growling sounds. I complied out of curiosity.

Soon, my bike was charged and I went my merry way. I shouldn’t have given Mrs. Breenlap my phone number. She has been sending me a steady stream of nude selfies. She looks pretty good for a 70-year-old woman. I have 200 selfies of her. I pasted them on the ceiling above my bed.

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.

Aposiopesis (a-pos-i-o-pee’-sis): Breaking off suddenly in the middle of speaking, usually to portray being overcome with emotion.

“This is, is . . .” I couldn’t finish my sentence. My crazy brother-in-law had duct taped me to a kitchen chair and was holding a corkscrew over my eyeball, twisting it menacingly and saying over and over “Your sister is going to have a baby.” I didn’t know if this was some kind of post-modern celebratory announcement, or if he was angry at me about my sister’s pregnancy—a really perverted view of things. I was squeaky clean and so was my sister—we could never imagine having sex together, the thought of it made my stomach queasy.

He had the corkscrew in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. He held up the piece of paper. It was a DNA test. It had his name on it as the father of the child. I pointed that out to him. He said “Oh. I must’ve read it wrong.” “Wrong?!” I yelled. “”You are the biggest . . . Oh, forget it. I just can’t believe how stupid you are! Get this duct tape off me!”

Just then my sister walked into the kitchen. “What the hell is going on Nolo?” “I was going to gouge your brother’s eyeball out because I thought he got you pregnant.” Nolo said. My sister hit him across the face with a Teflon frying pan—it clearly hurt him, but it wasn’t fatal. Nolo started crying and cutting me loose from the chair. My sister was standing by the refrigerator apologizing to me and cursing out Nolo.

I was beginning to think this could be the end of their marriage. My sister was a genius with a PhD in astrophysics. Nolo was a dull-witted freak. He had trouble tying his shoes and mowing the lawn. He worked loading UPS trucks and frequently misrouted packages, leading to floods of complaints and frequent near-firings. My sister, on the other hand, was an award-winning tenured professor at MIT.

It didn’t add up. There had to be something going on there that I needed to find out about. So, I looked in their window one night. They were playing “Patty-Cake” on the living room couch. I almost screamed with terror. I watched for a half-hour and went home. I drank a half-bottle of vodka and stumbled to bed and passed out. I got up the next morning feeling pretty shitty. I had four cups of coffee and pulled my college textbook on interpersonal relationships down from the bookshelf. I knew it would help me understand my sister and Nolo better. I opened the book and there was highlighted text: “People are unique choice-making beings who are capable of change.” That was it! “Unique!” I had to understand their relationship in its own right instead of comparing it to stereotypical concepts of what a “good” relationship is. Ignoring, abusive relationships, including spousal murder, I had found the answer to dealing with Nolo and my sister. They are unique individuals, even though their baby turned out looking just like Nolo—big hands and a budding unibrow. They’ve named it “Subaru” after their car and have it wear sunglasses (even inside) to conceal its identity from the “Iron Men” who pose a danger to themselves and others. Normally, I would call this crazy, but with my new-found interpersonal sensitivity, I know it is just an expression of their “unique choice-making beings.”

Nevertheless, it is hard to keep an open mind about my sister’s and Nolo’s construction of reality and their sanity. But they are moving right along down life’s highway, although Nolo lost his job at UPS for routing a package to North Korea. He starts his new job at “The Dollar Store” next week. He told me he was impressed with all the different brands of toilet paper they sell and can-openers too. He told me he’s “specializing” in two-year old canned minestrone soup. I don’t know what that means, but I accept it, respecting his uniqueness.

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.

Aposiopesis (a-pos-i-o-pee’-sis): Breaking off suddenly in the middle of speaking, usually to portray being overcome with emotion.

My time is. . . is run . . . ing out. The clouds are gathering. My sight is dimming. Shot 42 times in the stomach I should be dead already. I can hear you asking through the fog of my demise: “How do you know it’s 42 times.” I don’t know. It’s hyperbole, a figure of speech. Maybe if I said 100 times it would be clearer that I’m exaggerating for effect. You know, like there’s a million reasons for you to shut up and let me die in peace. But, there wasn’t going to be any peace. A dog started barking in his face and a car alarm went off and a motorcycle roared by.

Maybe his final wish would be fulfilled: win $5,500 on the Take Five scratch-off lotto ticket. His brother Thor was kneeling alongside him. They had been on their way to the marijuana dispensary to get a vape for their dad for Father’s Day. With great effort he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, pulled out a dollar, and told his brother to go to Cliff’s and get him a Take Five scratch-off lotto ticket, and also, call an ambulance.

He had been shot up by a gang of crackheads who roamed the neighborhood, mugging people, pushing people down and yelling insults—then they’d go back to their crackden and gloat over the evil they’d done. Somehow, they had gotten their hands on a bunch of handguns. They were shooting them in the air and dancing around. One of them tripped and accidentally shot him. If only he had been running his usual 3-card Monte scam, he would not have been shot. The crackheads had apologized promised him an ounce of crack if he kept his mouth shut.

Keeping his dying wish, his brother came running up the sidewalk waving the lotto ticket. He handed it to his brother who vigorously scratched it. It won a free Take Five ticket. He tore it up, dug out another dollar and told his brother to get another one.

Just then, the ambulance pulled up. The attendant said “What’s this red stuff?” and laughed. He said, “It’s my blood you f-ing shit for brains!” The attendant said “if you keep talking to me like that, we’ll leave you here.” He laughed again. They loaded him in the ambulance and took off for the hospital siren blaring. He underwent 6 hours of surgery, removing the bullets from his stomach. He died asking for his lotto ticket.

Meanwhile, his brother came back and nobody was there, so he scratched off the lotto ticket. He had hit the $5,500 jackpot. He kept it for himself.

Definition 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.

Aposiopesis (a-pos-i-o-pee’-sis): Breaking off suddenly in the middle of speaking, usually to portray being overcome with emotion.

I was always about to cry, but I never did, i’’d just let myself be overcome by emotion. Sure, crying can be considered as a sign of being overcome by emotion, but not for me. I have my reaso. . . . my reasons—I’m sorry I get all choked up when I think about my reasons for not crying. Basically, there’s only one reason: I can’t cry. My body’s physiology won’t permit me to cry. It is a dominant gene in my family’s heritage. None of us can cry, not matter what the trauma is. When my grandma jumped off the Goethells Bridge, landed in a garbage scow, and was killed by a shard of glass from a bottle of cheap gin, I almost pulled a sob, but alas my genes wouldn’t let me. And, when my pet kitty became a floormat under a car tie in the street in front of my house, I looked up and asked, “Why God?” But, there’s no catharsis there. One more example: Grandapa choked to death on a turkey bone. It was on Thanksgiving. Only ten minutes before Grandpa choked, we had given thanks for all our blessings. Nobody knew the Heimlich Maneuver and grandpa writhed around on the floor choking. As he turned purple, Aunt Gabby thought to call 911. But it was too late. I could feel my whole being wanting to cry, but again, my genetic makeup wouldn’t let me.

I couldn’t live this way—with no outward expression of grief. I started looking for answers. I ran across Stoicism—the idea that everything is open to interpretation, and you can interpret them in ways that are good for you. I tried really hard to interpret incidences prompting grief in ways that were good for me. But I still WANTED to cry. However, if I told people I was a Stoic, they accepted my failure to cry as a consequence of my philosophic commitments—a criterion immunizing my dry eyes from rebuke.

This was fine for me, but when I was with family, I still felt the need for a shared overt expression. My cousin Carl, who worked at the comedy club “Laugh Track” as an MC, nailed it! We can’t cry together, so, why don’t we laugh together? We would have to find the humor in tragedy, but if we could do it, we could share an experience.

Together as a family. So, we spent a little time developing punch lines and jokes we could deploy. What about Grandpa’s choking death? We came up with some lines that were somewhat funny: “Grandpa got so choked up he died.” “Grandpa had a bone to pick.” “Who said a turkey can’t kill you?” “He should’ve stuck with the mashed potatoes.”

Over the years, we’ve all become stand-up comics. We laugh in the face of death.

Definition 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.