Correctio (cor-rec’-ti-o): The amending of a term or phrase just employed; or, a further specifying of meaning, especially by indicating what something is not (which may occur either before or after the term or phrase used). A kind of redefinition, often employed as a parenthesis (an interruption) or as a climax.
Uncle Pearly
Uncle Pearly said: “We’re going to hell in a hand basket. No, actually, we’re goin’ to Cliff’s in my pickup.” Uncle Pearly is the funniest person I know. I laugh non-stop when mom leaves me with him for the day. The funniest thing we ever did was “borrow” cash from Cliff’s. I was only seven. My balaclava was way too big—we both laughed at it. The .357 Uncle Pearly gave me to wave around was way too heavy. I had to hold it with two hands! Uncle Pearly was carrying a gym bag and a Glock. He had shown them to me when he had handed me the 357–a family heirloom—a Ruger that had belonged to Pearly’s father, Gnarly. Gnarly had been convicted of fraud, imprisoned for 12 years, and stabbed to death in the prison kitchen when he was only 24. The rumor was that he had insulted the warden by waving a pair of warden’s wife’s underpants over his head in the prison exercise yard.
Everybody thought he was insane for waving the underpants. It was discovered that he had dug a tunnel from his cell to the warden’s house. He would crawl through the tunnel and “meet with” the warden’s wife. She was teaching him manners, and, also, how to read. Again, nobody could understand what motivated the underpants waving that had gotten him killed. Then, they found out.
The waving episode was the result of the warden’s and his wife’s breakup, which was partially due to the warden’s discovery of Gnarly’s tunnel. When Gnarly found out that the warden’s wife was going to live with her mother in Indiana, Gnarly went out into the prison yard to wave goodbye. He used a pair of her underpants because of the kindness that motivated her to give them to him as a reward. They symbolized their edifying friendship as teacher and student. It was all very sad, no, actually, it was deeply twisted. Who gives their underpants as a reward? Sick!
If Gnarly did particularly well on a reading assignment, the warden’s wife would reward him with a pair of her underpants. It was all she had and she believed that Gnarly would find something Crative to do with them. Gnarly was making the underpants into a quilt in accord with a Martha Stewart episode he had seen on his TV.
Anyway, me and Uncle Pearly got caught robbing Cliff’s. There was an off-duty state trooper standing at the counter when Uncle Pearly walked up and demanded all the cash. The state trooper pulled the .357 out of my hand and stuck it in the back of Pearly’s head. The end.
They let me go because I was “too little” to be a criminal. Uncle Pearly got 6 years. He works in the prison sewing shop making red-checkered tablecloths and matching napkins. He made a red-checkered suit that he is going to wear to his upcoming parole hearing.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.
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