The Daily Trope

Meiosis (mei-o’-sis): Reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes). This term is equivalent to tapinosis.

I called my dirty room “the dust mote bar and grill” making it seem less of a mess than it actually was. I’ve never been to a bar & grill but I liked the idea of eating and drinking at the same time. I was 12 and I had “borrowed” 2 beers at the last 4th of July family gathering and had eaten four snappy grillers. I was half-drunk when I asked my Aunt Betty to take walk to the lake with me. She called me a naughty boy and laughed and patted me on the head. I continued to the lake by myself. Frustrated. As I neared the lake, I started to remember. It was difficult, but I couldn’t push it out of my head.

I was 7 years old. After a year of promising “next weekend” my father was finally going to take me fishing at Lake Hoppaclang—one of Central New Jersey’s most beautiful lakes. It even had an amusement park on an island. The only condition for dad taking me fishing was that my little brother Don be allowed to come along. Don was what we called “a piece of work.” One of our biggest hopes was that he would learn to tie his own shoes some day and stop shuffling around inside the house saying he was a cha-cha train, and each room in the house a stop on his railroad line. For example, he would say: “Arriving at the kitchen. Next stop, downstairs bathroom. Watch your step.” This went on all day. It made my mother crazy. I heard my parents talking one night about how to suffocate a person in bed with their pillow. Dad was in favor, but mom wasn’t. She ran the show so Don got a reprieve.

We got up a 4:00 am. There was Don with his stupid looking overalls and dirty stuffed bunny that he said he was going to marry when he grew up. There was a half-bottle of rum on the kitchen table and dad looked like he was going to have a heart attack—he looked sort of gray and he was pounding on his chest. He said “Jesus! Let’s get the goddamn show on the road.” We had bought kids cheap “Donald Duck” fishing poles, hooks, bobbers, and sinkers at Walmart, and a cardboard quart container of worms at the gas station.

We got to Lake Hoppaclang just as the sun was rising. It was beautiful and quiet. There was a long dock with small 12-14 fit boats chained to it. As dad got out of the car he said “Hand me those bolt cutters on the floor.” Dad took the bolt cutters and walked down the dock like he was shopping. He settled on a nice looking aluminum boat. He knelt down and “liberated” it with one stroke of the bolt cutters. He motioned me and Don out onto the dock. We jumped in the boat and he pulled the rope on the outboard motor. It started right up and we headed out onto the lake. Don said “I am a fish.” He was about to jump overboard when I grabbed him by the leg. He threw a handful of worms at me and my father called him a moron, and my dad was right. He was a moron. He started punching his stuffed bunny and calling it a moron until my father handed him a fishing pole and told him to “catch a a friggin’ fish” and called him a moron again.

We drifted around the lake and caught at least 75 sunfish. They covered the bottom of the boat—dull-eyed and drying out in the sun. All-of-sudden dad stood up and said “Look at this!” He had a dead sunfish in his hand, holding it like a skipping stone. He threw it and it skipped at least six times. He picked up another one, tripped over Don and fell out of the boat. Dad could doggy paddle, but not for long. He was way overdue for a heart attack. We had no life-jackets or any other kind of flotation devices. The boat was drifting away from dad. Don was clapping his hands and saying “Dad will have big drink of lake and go bye-bye.” I told him to shut up and called him a moron—I was in charge now.

We had drifted around 50 feet from dad. He had taken all of his clothes off, but he was still starting to sink. I pulled the rope on the outboard motor. It started, I pushed the lever on the side forward and we started moving. I twisted the motor’s handle and we started speeding toward dad. He was waving his arms and yelling “No, no, no!” Don was throwing sunfish overboard and making a barking noise.

As we neared dad, I saw we weren’t going to hit him, but we were going to come really close. I told Don to throw the boat’s tie-up chain at dad as we went by. He said “Ok” so I thought he might have understood me. When we went by dad, Don threw the chain. It hit dad in the head and wrapped around his neck. Dad managed to loosen it enough so it wouldn’t strangle him. We were towing dad to shore. We were lucky because I didn’t know how to steer the boat. We drove up on shore and dad stood in the waist-deep water. He ran to the boat and picked up the fishing poles and told me to grab the bolt cutters. We ran to the car and burned rubber as we sped away. That was the last time we ever went fishing.

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

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