You've Been Lip Serviced

Most people don’t know this, but my wife is a master of persuasion and champion debater. And being a graduate of a state college public speaking class, I am well aware of the tools used against me when we are forced to go toe-to-toe in a verbal sparing match. They are the 3 Greek elements of persuasion, as set forth by Aristotle himself, and I’m sure you will all agree that he was one deep thinking SOB.

The three elements are as follows:
Ethos (Credibility or Ethics) means convincing by the character of the speaker, or persuading by appealing to one’s ethics.
Pathos (Emotional) means persuading by appealing to one’s emotions.
Logos (Logical) means persuading by the use of reasoning.

My wife, like all females, has never tried to use Logos. Before you ladies freak out and blow an ovary, let me say it is not my intention to offend. Females cannot be faulted for this. It’s just that they are born without the part of the brain that produces the logic hormone. We can no more expect them to use logic as we can expect them to pee accurately standing up. They’re just not built that way.

She is also unable to use the element of Pathos. This time however it is not due to a lack, but rather an over production of the element. When she attempts its use, words and noises fly out of her mouth in an uncontrolled barrage of inflammatory nonsense, which undulate in pitch, volume, and intensity. It's like watching one of the mutants, from the X-Men movies, as they first discover their powers and unwittingly cause large amounts of destruction.

As for Ethos, well, she uses it on a very limited basis.

So how can she possibly be a persuasive speaker, you are probably wondering. It is because she has discovered and capitalized on the forth Greek element;
Hyperbolos: persuading by the use of ridiculous exaggeration.

Allow me to illustrate with an excerpt from our most recent debate.

Situation: We are at the local Dell Taco to appease my wife’s “cravings.” This locale is equipped with a play area for kids, which my daughter disappears into the moment we arrive. Halfway through our meal…

Wife: Where’s Maggie?
Me: She’s playing.
Wife: Where? I can’t see her. Can you see her?
Me: She in one of those tubes. She’s fine.
Wife: Go find her.
Me: Go find her? Honey, there’s like 50 miles of tubing in there. It could take days. She’ll come out when she gets hungry.
Wife: There’s an outside exit in the play area. How can you be sure she didn’t open the door and run out into the street and is about to get splattered by a giant semi from Hell?
Me: What?
Wife: She’s probably in the back of a windowless van, gagged, bound, drugged, and helpless, with you sitting here stuffing your face, while her captors are forcing her to shoot up heroin and smoke crack and do acid.
Me: That’s a lot of drugs.
Wife: She could be getting high and watching pornography right now.
Me: Huh?
Wife: Maybe she’s in a shipping crate, on her way to war-torn Africa where she’ll be given a gun and forced to participate in the latest ethnic cleansing campaign and kill mindlessly while, simultaneously being forced into a life of child prostitution as the tribe passes her around like some kind of soulless plaything, and pushed to the brink of existence till she is nothing more than an empty shell, a vague memory of the cute, rosy-cheeked girl we once knew and one day, as she teeters on the edge of a monstrous African cliff, before she leaps to her own demise upon the jagged rocks below, she will utter one… last… word.
“DAAAADDYYYYY!!!”
Me: *gulp*
Wife: You’d never be able to forgive yourself. You’ll sit around in a constant state of morbid depression, getting old, fat, ugly, bald, stupid, and retarded. Unmovable. You’ll burst into uncontrollable, seizure-like, fits of weeping every time you think about the day you chose a burrito over your own daughter. Hmmph.

And with that last “hmmph,” I was defeated; once again bested by the Queen of Rhetoric. I promptly ran to the play place certain I was too late.

As it turns out, she was only playing on the slide. Not a windowless van in sight.