Protrope (pro-tro’-pe): A call to action, often by using threats or promises.

“C’mon. We’ve got to save her! If we don’t help her, she’ll drown. Get off your asses or I’ll kick them!” I yelled as loud as I could. Everybody just sat there. They didn’t even move their heads. I ran toward the lake to save the little girl who was drowning.

This was Silver Lake. It was more like a big pond. We hitchhiked there almost every day in the summer, all summer long. We had already lost one friend there—Floogie. His face looked like a flounder. He had jumped into the lake from a tall tree, hit bottom and died of a broken neck.

But now, little Susie Schmedder was going under. She was screaming “Help me! Help me!” While everybody sat there, some not even paying attention. I got to her and she rose from the water while everybody yelled “April fool!” It was August, what the hell? Nobody cared. It was the “Prank of the Week,” Susie’s brother Steven had Susie on his shoulders and had been breathing through his snorkel while he squatted under water so it looked like Susie was drowning.

“You wait!” I said “I’ll get you. You better watch out!” I started wracking my brain for THE prank of the ages to get back at them with. It didn’t take long. I would fake hang myself from the big maple tree on the edge of the city park by the bike path. My friends and I walked by there every day to our hitchhiking spot. They were bound to see me hanged. In the run-up to the prank I would tell them how depressed I was and how I wanted to kill myself. They staged an “intervention” and I was dragged to a psychologist. I told them I was only kidding about suicide. They told me “So are we! April Fool.” They left me standing on the sidewalk outside of the psychologist’s.

I was totally angry. I had been mega-pranked. I didn’t know what to do. I decided to go ahead and fake hang myself. They would think it was their fault because of what they’d done to me. I got a book from the library on how to fake hang yourself. It was titled “Up In The Air.” It was pretty complicated and warned that not following instructions would almost certainly result in death. I went to the hardware store and bought a length of hanging-grade rope. I told the Ace Hardware man that I was making a scratching post for my cat Jiffy. Then, I went home and tied a noose as “Up In The Air” instructed. Without going into detail, lacing the rope around my shoulders so I wouldn’t actually hang was quite complicated, but it would save my life.

The next day, all rigged up, I climbed the tree and tied the rope around the tree limb. When I saw my friends coming up the path, I jumped.

I woke up in the hospital with my friends clustered around my bed. Marie said “You almost killed your self. If Billy hadn’t cut you down with his Boy Scout knife, you’d be dead.” Chuck said, “We’re so sorry for what we did. We never should’ve faked taking you to the psychologist. We’ve decided no more pranking for the rest of the summer, or maybe ever agin.”

I felt satisfaction flowing through my veins—it must’ve been what morphine’s like. I had botched the prank by almost being killed. They had said nothing about the safety rope around my shoulders, so they probably didn’t see it, and believed I’d actually intended to kill myself.

I decided that instead of making this a prank, I’d make it a deception so they would be remorseful forever and would never be released from the nagging regret for what they had done to me. I would never tell them what my plan had been. They would never know—they would be deceived. Not knowing the truth is the kind of punishment they deserved. Like the Bible says, “The truth will set you free.” Does withholding the truth from them make them my slaves?

I hope so.

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

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.

Protrope (pro-tro’-pe): A call to action, often by using threats or promises.

“If you don’t have another baby pretty soon, I’m going to leave you on somebody’s porch.” Whoops. I should’ve said “litter.” I was talking to Dinah, the poodle and queen of my puppy mill. Jaques had been after her all week, but she would run away from him or bite him, or both. This was the first time something like this had happened. Dog reproduction had always been fail safe, with nature following its course naturally and reliably.

If Dinah was done reproducing, I could give her away to somebody as a pet. My niece Joanie had been pestering me for a dog since Christmas. I checked with my brother and he said it was ok. So, I got a food dish, a bag of food, a collar, and a leash at the pet store where I sold most of my puppies, and then, headed for my brother’s with Dinah. My brother was waiting at the door. Dinah barked and wagged her tail as she went through the front door. She sniffed around the house and jumped up onto the couch with Joanie. Joanie was elated and gave Dinah a big hug.

Joanie would take Dinah for walks, bathe her, brush her, feed her and generally care of her like a doting mother.

Then it happened.

Dinah got off her leash and was “accosted” by a coyote. Joanie told me Dinah and the Coyote were “dancing together.” My God! Dinah was bred by a coyote. This was a total complete shock.

Dinah became pregnant and gave birth to a litter of four “Pooyotees.” One of the puppies had two heads! One head was Poodle, the other was Coyote. He was healthy and grew right along with the other pups. We named him Flambeau after one of the characters on “Father Brown Mysteries,” a lovable thief who made repeated appearances on the show.

Flambeau’s heads would bark at each other, and sometimes he seemed to have a hard time deciding which way to go. The heads would growl at each other and eventually make a decision. Sometimes, the heads would fight over whether to chase a ball, or sit, or shake hands. Clearly, the two heads had minds of their own that were fraught with conflict.

Flambeau was living with me, so I had to struggle with his problems. I bought him a shock collar and would give him a jolt whenever he would start fighting with himself. He would yelp and stop the fighting. One night while I was sleeping, Flambeau pulled out the bedside lamp’s plug from its outlet. He chewed the chord to bare wire about a foot up from the plug, wrapped it around my neck, and plugged it back in.

I was nearly electrocuted. To this day, I do’t know how he got the chord wrapped around my neck. I’ll ever forget the smell of my neck burning. I knew why he did it. It was retribution for the shock collar I used on him.

I discovered he was the highest dog I.Q. In the world, and that’s how I advertised him in my traveling show: “Pooyote Pacesetter: The Genius Two-Headed Dog.”

Flambeau could paint beautiful symmetrical designs with his two noses dipped in acrylic paint. He could bark-sing in harmony with himself. His favorite was “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” He could compete with himself in pulling on a chew toy. Audience members loved it when they paid $5.00 to be licked on the face by both of his heads.

We had a successful 8 year run when Flambeau dropped dead after licking an audience member’s face. Flambeau was murdered. The person was an animal rights activist who had smeared cyanide paste on his face “to liberate the dog from slavery.” I thought murder was a weird kind of liberation. The murderer, a Columbia University graduate student, was given six months in jail for animal cruelty.

I was heartbroken. Flambeau was irreplaceable. I retired and started collecting Social Security. In order to afford an apartment and eat, I have four roommates. They treat me like a dog and I like it. I have a basket by the front door.

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.

Protrope (pro-tro’-pe): A call to action, often by using threats or promises.

”Get the hell out of bed or I‘ll blow your lazy ass away!” It was my father standing in my bedroom door pointing a ,45 at me. He walked across the room and stuck the .45 into my back. I was on my side in a fetal position. Suddenly, I woke up! I was ‘only’ dreaming. My father was poking me in the back with a broom handle. “Goddamnit, Larry, get up! The bus will be here in 10 minutes and I’m not driving you if you miss it!” My father was pissed. It was Wednesday and I hadn’t been to school yet that week. I had a problem.

I told my father I’d get up when he left my room. He left and I threw off the covers and carefully got out of bed. I had a boil on my butt that was getting bigger every day. It started out as small as a mosquito bite and now it was as big as a strawberry and it was painful to sit on it.

I was too embarrassed to show it to my parents—especially my Mom. I couldn’t imagine pulling down my pants in front of my Mom and having her touch my boil—it gave me the willies just to think about it. Yech! And my father—God only knows what he would do—-probably get his electric drill and drill a drain hole in my butt. I just couldn’t do it.

Because of the boil, riding the school bus I had to stand so it wouldn’t make my butt hurt. Everybody would look at me and the teen-aged driver “Brakes” Bentley would yell at me to sit the “heck” down or he would pull over and throw me off the bus. He kept his promise, and I was late to school. I had to stand in school too. I told my teacher I was standing for leg cramps, raising money for “Crush the Cramps,” I told them .25 cents was donated in my name for every hour I stood in the back of the room. My teachers believed me! Then, my boil had a big growth spurt.

It had become the size of a half-grapefruit riding on my left butt cheek. I turned to the internet and Google to see if I could find a remedy: “How to sit painlessly on a boil.” I got several hits but the most promising was “Boil Bumpers.” They were cushions that “Naturally mold to your boil and cushion it like a down-filled nest.” The Bumper used your body’s heat to make the pillow fit to your boil’s own unique shape. I cleaned out my bank account and bought a boil bumper. It arrived 2 days later. The instructions were simple: shove it down the back of your underpants, or pull your underpants up around it and get dressed.

The Butt Bumper was wonderful. I was sitting again! I knew I could beat this thing by riding it out. But then, all hell broke loose! My boil blew up to the size of a half basketball. My pillow wouldn’t fit any more, not to mention my pants. I talked my sister into buying me a pair of pants three sizes too big at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. The pants fit over my boil, but I needed a belt. My father asked me what the hell was going on with my pants. I told him I was experimenting with using big pants as a backpack substitute. He was impressed.

Then, it happened: my boil blew. My sister thought it would be funny to put a thumbtack in my bed. She didn’t know about my boil and the possible consequences of what she was doing—she thought it was a harmless prank. I rolled onto the tack in my sleep. I was awakened by a hissing sound. It was air being expelled from my boil where the tack had penetrated it. It smelled like Kentucky Fried Chicken and took about twenty minutes to deflate.

I discovered later that I had had a “false boil.” It filled with air, rather than pus. I couldn’t understand the technicalities, but I was grateful that it ended the way it did. In a way, I have my sister to thank. Being punctured when it was, kept the boil from growing up my back, and eventually, turning me into a balloon.

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.

Protrope (pro-tro’-pe): A call to action, often by using threats or promises.

“Move it! Get out of bed! Do you want me to hose you down again? Your mattress is still wet from the last time you lazy piece of shit. Move it!“

I was so damn tired I was ready to endure another hosing. I had been forced to stay up until 3.00 am completing my mentor’s matchstick lighthouse—it was four feet tall and he had been working on it for 3 years, making me work on it for my “growth and development as a human organism.” The evil Junior mentor turned on the hose and I jumped out of bed—it was 6.30 am and my eyes hurt from glue fumes and my fingers were stiff from working with the matchsticks. My matchstick worker buddy Leonardo had disappeared. There was a small stain on the floor under his workstation that looked like blood.

I didn’t know what to do. I had been sent to Grimdale Orphanage when my parents died in a motorboat crash. My father tried to cut off a cargo container ship and was run over. The search for my parents was fruitless. They were lost at sea, presumably eaten by sharks. I’m sure my little brother had something to do with what happened. He made sure we didn’t go out that day and that we were taken care of by our Dutch nanny Abbe Bakker who wore wooden shoes and was crazy. So, we spent the day jumping up and down on pieces of tin foil “to feed energy to the earth.”

Anyway, my brother was immediately adopted. He would sit on the couch with his hands held like paws, panting with his tongue hanging out. A family who ran a dog kennel fell in love with him and off he went. I on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. I had “Nasal River Syndrome.” My nose would not stop running. I carried Kleenex in my lunchbox instead of lunch, so I would have a constant supply of tissues for my constantly running nose. People would come to Grimdale to adopt an orphan and they’d see my wet shirtfront and lunchbox full of tissues and say “Next.” I had lived in the orphanage for 10 years and was turning 17 next month. Maybe my mentor could help me. I begged Mr. Twozlok to help me somehow. He told me it was my fate to leak all over my shirtfront and use 100s of tissues in a day.

So I went again to the weekly “Find a Family” event, absolutely certain that I’d be rejected by everybody. Then, an incredibly wealthy looking man waved excitedly at me. He had a jewel encrusted sponge around his neck and a 24kt. gold lunchbox with tissues hanging out. He said, “Clearly, you have what I have. Given the rarity of our malady, there is an excellent chance you are my son, plus you have one green eye and one blue eye, like me.” I started sobbing. I discovered that when I sobbed, my nose would stop running.

We went home to his mansion and he introduced me to my new mother. She hung a sponge pendant around my neck and welcomed me with a big hug. I was ecstatic, but I still had unfinished business—learning how to sob on demand and solving the disappearance of my friend Leonardo.

POSTSCRIPT

Leonardo’s remains were found dismembered and stuffed into Mr. Twozlok’s Lighthouse. It was discovered that the lighthouse was the symbolic representation of a central feature of the cult that Twozlok belonged to. He was an elder and was charged with burning a lighthouse with a dead young male stuffed in it. The ritual appeased their god’s need to make people do bad and disgusting things every 50 years as signs of their faith.

Sobbing on demand was out of reach until the boy chopped up an onion to go with some home fries he was helping his mother prepare. They made his eyes tear up, and if he made a grunting sound, it approximated sobbing. From that time on, he carried a small gold case filled with fresh onion slices that he would dice the lid with the pearl-handled pen knife his father had given him engraved: “Let your tears roll down like nature’s saving rain,” Although he smelled like his mother’s nearly magical meatloaf, he knew the onions were his salvation. This was driven home when he met and married a girl named “Matahari” (an onion variety) whose family owns a 200-acre onion farm in the Salinas Valley near Monterey. He manages the farm and phones his parents every Sunday to let them know how he and Matahari are doing. He is happy.

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.