Category Archives: charientismus

Charientismus (kar-i-en-tia’-mus): Mollifying harsh words by answering them with a smooth and appeasing mock.

She: “You’re an asshole. A big puffy asshole.”

He: “I’m not so much an asshole as you’re a hole-in-one. Ha, ha! Get it?”

She: “That’s exactly what I mean. You’re an asshole. It’s over. I’m tired being all you need, like some kind of Army recruitment poster.”

He: “That’s easy for you to say. With your looks you’ll rebound like a basketball while I cry in the shadows of love—like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan, like a bowl of cornpone, like a stale ice cream cone, like a . . .

She: “Shut the hell up! You’re not a “rider on the storm” or even a rider on the subway. You are such an asshole. Why don’t you go home?”

He: “Home? Where’s that? I thought I lived here with you. This is where my heart is, so I must be home. 167489 Crutch Road, just around the corner from the hospital where I have my dialysis every day to help my kid knees—get it? It’s actually kidneys. I know, when I say it you can’t tell the . . .”

She: Shut up, Shut up! Go down in the basement and get in your cage. I filled your water bowl this afternoon and put down fresh paper shreds. Go!”

He was an asshole. It was only through the kindness of her heart that she kept him. She considered the cage an act of kindness along with the filled water bowl and shredded paper. These pretty much constituted the limits of her kindness. Someday she’d get around to buying a blanket for the asshole at Salvation Army. But as long as he persisted at being an asshole, the blanket will be postponed. She had standards! Oh, then there was food. All of it was scavenged from fast food dumpsters. This saved her money, and often, the dumpster food was still warm, especially if she scavenged it late at night.

Every night when she was going to bed with Nick the Plumber she felt warm and cozy in her big king-sized bed. The asshole, and the hassle of keeping him, would flee from her head. It was almost as if her life was normal. Every night she would dream of the asshole. She would remember how it used to be—it was even worse than it was now. She didn’t know what to do. He was such an asshole.

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.

Charientismus (kar-i-en-tia’-mus): Mollifying harsh words by answering them with a smooth and appeasing mock.

She: Can you please stop acting like a total idiot when we’re hanging out with my friends?

He: I’m just trying to fit in. Ha, ha. Just kidding. But, let’s face it there’s something about your friends that’s a little off,

She: I know. None of us ever got over our high school crush on Travis. He dated us. He went steady with us. He dId other things with us. He broke up with us, and, when he graduated, he went to live with our English teacher Ms. Tushski. They live in town and he’s tried unsuccessfully to rekindle romance with all of us. He’s an egotistical maniac who’s stuck in his glory days as a high school stud.

He: This is what I mean—the idiotic endless recounting of the “Travis Story”—a story that’ll never have a happy ending. Just because I try to change the subject, I’m an idiot.

She: But what can I do? He’s not going anywhere and I see that Ms. Tushski is pregnant. No doubt, the child is his.

Me: Maybe this will work: You get to know him as a friend. We can invite him and Ms. Tushski over to dinner and get to know them socially. We can have your special quiche and a couple glasses of wine. They can bring dessert.

TWO DAYS LATER

She: There’s the doorbell. I’ll get it, Hi Travis, welcome to our home.

Travis: You remember Ms. Tushski. We’re married and have baby on the way. We can’t stay too late. I have to get home to soak my hemorrhoids by nine o’clock.

He: That’s too bad Travis, but we understand.

Travis: Yeah if I don’t soak ‘em by nine, they itch like crazy—I smear on cortisone and shove a suppository up there, but if I don’t soak, they don’t work, and I’ll be draggin’ my butt around on the living room carpet.

She: Oh, well. We all get older. Is there anything else?

Travis: Nah, just some bowel control issues. I’ve got it covered with Depends—the same brand Trump uses.

She: Oh. That must be a bother—especially if you need a change when you’re out and about.

He: Well. Ms. Tushski, when’s the baby due?

Ms. Tushski: I don’t know. I love the suspense. It’s like a good story. Do you remember “Buck Rogers and the Martian Pyromaniac?” That’s the feeling I get every time I look down at my bloated belly.

POSTSCRIPT

They finished dinner.

In silence, they ate the strawberry jello that Ms. Tushski and Travis had brought After the jello,, the two of them left in a cab.

He and She looked at each other. Simultaneously, they both said “Poor Ms. Tushski” and laughed.

That was the end of that.

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

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.

Charientismus (kar-i-en-tia’-mus): Mollifying harsh words by answering them with a smooth and appeasing mock.

Joe: You’re the laziest person in the universe.

Nick: I’m resting. I don’t need a wake-up call from you Mr. 6:00 am.

These two guys didn’t get along with each other. Their conversations consisted mainly of insults and almost every week they’d end up fighting—wrestling on the kitchen floor. But times were tough and they needed each other to cover the rent. Then, they decided to sublet the hallway closet—it was big enough for a single bed and it had shelves and plenty of room to hang things. All it needed was an extension cord and it was good to go, New York style.

They put an ad on sublet.com. They were renting the closet for $500 per month. Joe and Nick hoped the extra money would get them off the edge, and give them a modicum of financial stability. They got over 200 responses to their ad. They were overwhelmed. They decided to close their eyes and randomly point to an application from the ones scattered on the kitchen island, and see what they got.

They hit the application on the top of the pile: a veterinarian. They thought they couldn’t go wrong subletting to an animal doctor—he probably made good money and wouldn’t stiff them on the rent. So, he moved in. His name was Dr. Doolittle. One night Joe heard rustling around in the kitchen. Dr. Doolittle was drinking a martini a with a large chimpanzee in pajamas.

Dr. Doolittle introduced the chimp—its name was Cheetah III and his great-grandfather had appeared in numerous Tarzan films. Dr. Doolittle had rescued Cheetah from a factory in Thailand where he worked assembling iPhones, seven days a week, with no vacation.

Joe called Nick into the kitchen and they told Dr. Doolittle to get rid of the chimp or move out. Dr. Doolittle finished his martini, put down the glass and said “No.” Cheetah stood in front of the doctor with his fists raised. Dr. Doolittle said, “You know, Cheetah cooks, does laundry and dishes, cleans bathrooms, and vacuums.” Joe and Nick looked at each other and nodded their heads.

Dr. Doolittle taught Joe and Nick how to speak Chimpanese, and Cheetah would tell them chimpanzee folktales while he washed the dinner dishes. Their favorite tale was “Charlie the Hairless Chimp.” It was about a bald chimp that was relentlessly teased by his peers. A female chimp named Rosie took pity on him. Although they had poor hygiene, the local sloths shed a lot of fur in the spring. Rosie made Charlie a sloth fur sweater. It covered most of his nakedness and the teasing stopped. Charlie founded a foundation for bald chimps, collecting sloth fur and knitting sloth fur sweaters for needy chimps. Charlie and Rosie got married and lived happily ever after. Charlie invented a sloth fur sweater shampoo called “Bubble Slow” and made one-million banana bucks, most of which he donated to his foundation.

Joe and Nick were inspired by Cheetah’s stories and stopped wrestling with each other on the kitchen floor. For some reason now, Nick would say “Me Tarzan, who you?” when he was trying meet a woman in a bar. One night he struck gold when a woman replied “I Jane.” They’ve been dating for a month.

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