Category Archives: ara

Ara (a’-ra): Cursing or expressing detest towards a person or thing for the evils they bring, or for inherent evil.

I started hating him right after I first met him. He said bad things about other people that weren’t true. He said my little brother was a “mental case.” He said my little brother enjoyed stepping in dog poop and smearing it on the sidewalk. This couldn’t be true. I followed my little brother to find out. It wasn’t true. Actually, my little brother kicked pieces of dried dog poop and yelled “Five points!” There was certainly nothing insane about that. It is hard to resist kicking a piece of dried dog poop. Great Americans have kicked dried dog poop. For example, it was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite pastimes. Thomas Jefferson kicked a pice of dried dog poop around the entire perimeter of his plantation.

After he impugned my little brother, he went after my older sister. She was 20 and was going to divinity school. She wanted to be a preacher—preaching the Gospel and bringing “lost lambs” back to the flock. I wasn’t that happy with the reference to the congregation as sheep—a docile collective of bleating, hairy animals. But that was ok compared to the rumors he started spreading.

He said she didn’t believe in Jesus!

What was his evidence? He said she was a nude dancer at “Ruckus,” a men only strip club overflowing with sensuality, worship of the flesh, and laced with numerous highways leading to adultery. But this was wrong. My sister was working her way through divinity school—stripping was a means to an end. It did good by enabling my sister to get a divinity degree. Not only that, by being among sinners and miscreants she had ample opportunities to minister to them, even if she was naked and gyrating on a pole: she found them as they were and started there, and brought them to Jesus.

I hated this guy. I didn’t understand why he wanted to make other people look bad. I started the rumor that he wore adult diapers, was a chronic liar, and a narcissist. The rumor is slowly gaining traction. I have a new rumor in the works. I will be releasing it on his birthday.

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.

Ara (a’-ra): Cursing or expressing detest towards a person or thing for the evils they bring, or for inherent evil.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I could go on saying this all day. The mirror doesn’t lie. That’s me and I hate you. It’s not a good thing to vehemently hate yourself. Oh, the reason I hate myself is because everybody hates me & I respect their judgment. Take my father, for example. He hates me because I’m smarter than him. I can count to 1,000. He can’t get past 35. If I want to make him mad I say “1,000.” He goes berserk. Last time I did it he threw a lit cigar at me. It missed and caught his favorite chair on fire. I put the fire out and it made him even madder. He yelled “I’ll get you, you little bastard.” He came at me with a meat tenderizer. I ran out of the house and slammed the door in his face.

As you can imagine, my home life was pretty bleak. My mother hated me too. When we ate dinner, I was not allowed to have silverware. I had to eat with my hands. She called me pig boy and made me oink. If I refused to oink she would taser me and beat me with a wooden spatula. She called it the “boy behaver.” She would hit me on the ears with it, so I was nearly deaf. My ears were deformed from being beaten and they wouldn’t stop ringing. So, I was ugly. I hated that.

I asked the girl who worked in the school library if she wanted to go to the movies with me. I said we could go see “Chucky.” She said, “I don’t have to go to the movies, Chucky’s standing right in front of me.” I hit her in the face with the OED sitting on the counter. That was a mistake. They called the police. I was arrested for assault and held in jail. For some reason they thought I was a flight risk and I was denied bail.

My lawyer was a champion sleaze ball. I hated her, but somehow she was able to convince the jury I was not guilty because I was provoked by being compared to Chucky—it triggered “the Chucky in me,” a Chucky that we all have lurking in the darker regions of our souls. We are all little children with red hair wearing overhauls. Terror lurks in us all. I could see members of the jury shuddering at the Chucky image, while the library girl made a disgusted face and shook her head in disbelief

Not guilty!

The two sweetest words in the English language. I went to hug my lawyer and she told me to get my hands off her. So, I took a cab home.

My father was waiting on the front porch with the meat tenderizer poised to strike. He said, “What? Did you escape from jail?” I laughed and told him I was not guilty.

I got a job in a chewing gum factory. My job is to watch packs of chewing gum go by on the rubber conveyor belt. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for. I should probably ask, but that would be embarrassing. The woman who works next to me got the boss to make me wear a paper bag over my head. It has eye holes punched in it, but no mouth, nose, or ear holes. It impedes my peripheral vision, but it does not affect the quality of my work. However, it does affect the depth of my self loathing.

I’m meeting with a self-help group called “Self Loathers Anonymous.” The meetings consist of people taking turns telling how much they hate themselves. I have learned that there are tons of reasons why people hate themselves, from a bad experience with Santa Claus to succumbing to evil impulses directed toward a cupcake. Then, I met a girl. She actually agreed to go for a drink after the meeting. We went to “Bev’s Brews” down the street.

She told me she could see why I loathed myself—my looks, my demeanor, and my smell were all loathworthy to the max. I pretty much said the same to her about her, except I added her yellow, almost orange, teeth like a beaver’s. We sat there for an hour saying hurtful things to each other—not holding back. I felt bad about myself in a new way.

We told the truth to each other and it set us free. These were not made-up taunts designed solely to hurt, but these were objective statements that provided insight and a sturdy foundation for our self hatred. For example, my ears are ugly, but so what! That’s what they are and I don’t care. Yes, I don’t care. It still hurts that they scare people, but that is a fleeting feeling on the way to I don’t care.

We learned this together and we fell in love with the horror of each other—with the repulsive smells, and looks, and actions that disgust us. It was either that, or live a solitary existence. We share our pain and it is edifying—it builds us up and induces compassion.

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.

Ara (a’-ra): Cursing or expressing detest towards a person or thing for the evils they bring, or for inherent evil.

Mothers. Who died, and put them in charge? Nag, nag, nag to no avail except a feeling of worthlessness and anxiety. Do my socks smell? What about my armpits? Do they smell? Do I smell? Why should it matter? Because Mother makes it matter by bringing it up all the time: “Son, you have B.O. you better go soak in some laundry detergent. Then, you’ll smell as fresh as a sunny May day—72 degrees with a mild breeze and Crocus coming up in everybody’s front yard.” She made being clean like a peak experience in life—like watching your child being born or hiking the Appalachian trail from beginning to end, or finding a coin worth thousands of dollars of dollars in your change at the grocery store.

I guess what I hate is the prodding it takes to be normal, always needing somebody else to frame it for you, because you do not know what it is. My mother would ask me: “You are on your way to school and see a house in flames. What should you do?” I wanted to get it right, and my mother was going to determine that from my answer. The words “normal” and “right” had no meaning for me—they just were said to see their effect on others, which would determine their meaning for the time being. So, I ventured an answer to Mother’s question: “I would keep on way to school. The people in the house will die no matter what I do. There’s not even a garden hose to put out the fire as far as I know. But learning is more important. I don’t want to be late to school. I might miss something.” No matter what I answered Mother would slap me across the face and yell “Moron!” So, given the repetition of question/answer/slapping sequence I can think of myself as a Moron. It was a comfortable feeling, knowing I would never amount to anything, and striving was unnecessary for me to achieve my potential, because it was nonexistent. I was on a cruise—no corporate ladders to climb, no worrying about body odor except when my mother came visit. She reaffirmed my moronhood, and the leisurely lifestyle it affords me. But, I still hate her because she didn’t ask me more questions I couldn’t answer correctly, deepening my moronic self concept.

When you’re wrong all the time, nobody expects you to be right. This is a wonderful feeling: nobody expects anything from you. You are free! This is the moron’s credo.

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.