Category Archives: erotema

Erotema (e-ro-tem’-a): The rhetorical question. To affirm or deny a point strongly by asking it as a question. Generally, as Melanchthon has noted, the rhetorical question includes an emotional dimension, expressing wonder, indignation, sarcasm, etc.

“Who thinks this is going to go over well? Who is crazy enough to leave bomb in aisle 8?”

I was only a bag boy, but even I knew there was something wrong. Everyone ran out of the supermarket. Aisle 8 was stocked with nuts. The bomb planted there was fitting.

I stayed behind because I was too stupid to think I might be blown up—splattered on the floor and shelves.

The “bomb” was made out of a Planter’s Peanuts jar with an antenna sticking through the lid. It was filled with peanuts. I figured the bomb was buried in the peanuts. I thought if I picked it up and smashed it on the floor it would become harmless, or it might blow up. I yelled to the empty supermarket “What should I do?” A squeaky voice answered “You better get out of here!”

I looked up—it was Archie Stern, the smartest kid for a 200-mile radius. He had won awards—his rubber-band powered golf cart had just won the Arnold Palmer Golfing Equipment Innovation Award. Just yesterday, his Illegal Alien Detector had been adopted by ICE netting Archie millions of dollars. What could be his problem? Trying to sound tough, I asked: “Archie, what’s your beef?”

He held up a cellphone and yelled: “It isn’t a beef. It’s more like an annoying itch. I am trying to draw my mother in to aisle 8 so I can blow her up. She’s a gosh darn pain in the neck, pushing me. pushing me, always pushing me. She goes grocery shopping every day around this time. Soon, I’ll have here within range of my bomb.”

Just then, Archie’s mother came walking up the aisle carrying a bullhorn. Archie told me to get the heck out of there unless I wanted to be made into a stain. I took his advice and ran. As I ran past the cash registers I heard her, using the bullhorn, say “Archie, you idiot, you’re squandering your big beautiful future. Go home and start a new project. If you don’t give me the cellphone you’ll only have saltines for dinner. Give me the cellphone.”

I pictured her standing in front of him with her hand out when Archie detonated the bomb. When it exploded it blew off his mother’s head. Ironically, it landed in the produce section among the heads of lettuce. Archie became a large puddle with bones.

Even in death he was valorized as a genius. He had found a way to make peanuts explosive. A single peanut thrown at an ATM could blow it open.

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.

Erotema (e-ro-tem’-a): The rhetorical question. To affirm or deny a point strongly by asking it as a question. Generally, as Melanchthon has noted, the rhetorical question includes an emotional dimension, expressing wonder, indignation, sarcasm, etc.

What the hell is going on here? Why is my world melting into a pile of smoking plastic? Don’t answer me. I am beyond answers. I only have questions—questions about questions, questions about questions about questions, questions about questions about questions about questions. Questions aiming nowhere. Questions questioning questions. Questions of infinite extent pointing toward the endless sky. Questions always delivered with an upward inflection of the voice, or possibly, they would be misunderstood as mere sarcasm or cut-rate irony.

When I was 14, I started building my own home, so I could, as my father told me, “get off” my “ass and be somebody.” I was young, but I was determined to show Dad a thing or two. There was a vacant lot next door. I talked my dad into buying it for me so I could show my worth—just like he wanted. He agreed—he had to enable me to live up to his expectations.

Now that I had the lot, I needed to do something with it. My planning skills left a lot to be desired. First, I thought about installing a swimming pool. I would dig a huge hole and fill it with water. I started digging. After two days I quit. I ached all over. Dad took a look at what I had done and said “Looks like a basement son.” Bingo!

I had gotten a set of Legos for my birthday. I looked on their website in Denmark. They had a whole miniature Lego Town—including little Cape Cod houses. I wrote an email telling them I wanted to build a full-size Lego house and live in it. I got a congratulatory email back from them. They would give me all the Legos I needed if I would promise to hold an open house twice a year. I made the promise. Two trailer trucks showed up the next day. Each one delivered ten pallets of Legos. The driver of one the trucks handed me blueprints and wished me “A lot of fuc*in’ luck”

I worked day and night, almost flunking out of school. It was hard work snapping together thousands and thousands of little plastic pieces. But it was worth it. My Lego home made its debut on my 20th birthday. I moved in with my girlfriend Barbara Anne. We loved lolling around in the hot tub, watching TV in our pajamas, playing Twister on the living room floor, and engaging in other censored activities elsewhere. As agreed, we were going to hold our first open house right before Christmas.

The day came. I got up early—around 6:30 a.m. I looked out the living room window. There were at least 100 people in front of the house. When they saw me in the window, they started hooting and yelling and inching toward my house. I was scared and so was Barbara Anne. I told her to hold my hand and she calmed down a little. I went outside and told the crowd to calm down, to line up on the sidewalk and enter the house five at a time. The ordeal lasted pretty much all day. When it was over, our home was ravaged. The carpets were filthy and the photo of me and Barbara Anne had been stolen, along with everything else that wasn’t nailed down. The Lego bathroom shower wall had been dismantled and stolen.

I called Denmark the next day and told them what had happened and that I was finished with the open house business. Aksel said “A promise is a promise. We will give you a two-week trip to the Cayman Islands so you can work things out.“ I took the offer to go to the Caymans, but made it clear, I was still withdrawing from the open house agreement. Aksel said, “That’s too bad. We will be in touch.”

While we were in the Cayman Islands, we got two or three calls from Aksel every day asking “Will you reconsider?” My answer was always “No.”

So, when we got home, the house had been torched—melted to the ground. I thought, “Those Danes don’t fuc*k around.” Neighbors had seen a Viking ship on wheels being towed by an Audi pull up in front of my house. The ship’s crew had lit torches, were wearing leather tunics, capes and trousers, and leather helmets with cow horns. They marched in formation to my house, encircled it, and threw their torches inside after breaking the windows. Then, pulled by the Audi, they sped away in their ship singing “In the land of the north where the wind blows cold there’s the blood of a Viking. . . .”

Aksel called the next day to let me know we were even, and he was right. Now I had the answer I was looking for. Why was my house destroyed? I had broken my promise. Was that a good reason?

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.