Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Warm up. Nothing to read yet. You know, little stretching before running (yeah, as if). Maybe a better analogy might be singing (or other musical instrument operating), yeah! that’s it hold on, I’ll get us a video.
Yeah! Now we’re talking… or singing, ok, humming, only ’cause I’m a clark and we have a problem with the singing thing.
So, what the hell would a proper ‘classic rhetoric warm up exercise’ consist of?
Oh man! No, seriously, I searched and read and, seeing how that was, like, 20 minutes ago, no way I can continue this humorous set up. There are way more cool, Greco-latin words for talking funny than I’d ever realized. Man, them grammarians and rhetorians know how to have fun with the writing and the words and such.
Speaking of words. Our friend zoe does this thing, every Thursday, called the Six Sentence Story. It’s a bloghop (so there’ll be other stories to read and enjoy) and it requires that only Six Sentences go into any story (so it won’t take too long to read ’em).
Stick.
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,’ the little boy thought, his frown every bit the all-or-nothing exertion of a body builder, facing the weight no longer supported by anything other than muscles and will.
‘That’s what I should’ve said,’ walking along the leaf-carpeted street in the gathering dusk of a cloudy autumn Thursday, the boy felt his initial anger begin to transmute into embarrassment. Like the first drink to an alcoholic, his consideration of what he might have said or done changed everything, without anything changing. If he could now see what he might have done differently, then the impact of what actually happened was diminished, what he wanted to have happened increasingly the basis for how he felt. With each logically-inferred alternate version of the recent bus stop drama playing and replaying in his mind, rendered in meticulous detail, the boy felt better and better; the land of normal emotional connections trading places with the mirage, the unreal become real and the real, avoidable.
As he walked from the pool of yellowish streetlight up the flagstone walk towards the house, it’s picture window a welcoming borealis of blue-grey television light, the boy felt less and less like crying.
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