Mempsis (memp’-sis): Expressing complaint and seeking help.
“What’s the matter with you?” My wife asked.
I yelled, “I’m stuck under the bed. Pick up the bed and pull me out! I found my slipper, but my butt’s wedged under the box spring. Come on, where are you?” My wife came back in the bedroom. She said, “I’m putting you on an under bed diet, honey. My slippers trap worked perfectly. Your fat ass is captured.” I squirmed around, I tried to lift the bed, I sucked in my stomach, nothing worked. She said, “It’s going to get a little smelly under there, but I’ll clean you up as best I can. I have this rubber tube for you to eat your special diet through. According to the web, you’ll lose 20 lbs in a week.”
If I had my cellphone, I would’ve called the police. My wife had clearly gone around the bend. On the other hand, I was fat and she had been pestering me for at least five years to lose weight. The worst consequence of my obesity was our daughter. She was only 6 and she weighed 165 lbs. She was on the Elementary School wrestling team. Our mantle was loaded with her trophies. This was great in one sense, but her weight was clearly an unhealthy price to pay. She would tell me she wanted to be fat like me and beat everybody up.
I’d been under the bed for a week when my wife left the door open. I saw my daughter’s feet go by and called out to her. She came in the room and said: “God it stinks in here! Why are you under the bed?” “Never mind that, just get me out of here!” I yelled. “Lift the bed!” She lifted the bed and I skittered out from under it.
I was on the warpath. I asked my daughter where her mother was. She told me was at “Hair-Snips” her friend Barbara’s hair salon, getting a makeover. I took a shower and put on clean clothes.
The only weapon I could find was my claw hammer. I was going to do a citizen’s arrest for false imprisionment, and I thought I would need a weapon to render her compliant. I walked into “Hair-Snips” and all the women turned a looked at me and started making cat calls: “Woo baby, what’s your number?, What’re you doing tonight?, Nice buns, I want a piece of what you’re packin’ honey,” and more. I had lost 20lbs under the bed. I was a stud again! I looked with an air of detachment at the fawning women and strutted to my wife’s chair, and gave her a long hug, and stuck my tongue in her ear. I felt like a rock star. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight baby.” So, the three of us went out to dinner. Our daughter ate a donut in the car on the way to the restaurant. My wife looked knowingly at me.
We discussed it and decided the under bed diet was too cruel for our dear daughter. So, we decided instead to handcuff her hands behind her back between meals.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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