My Embarrassing Story 8/28/11

My embarrassing story began on Thanksgiving day 2005. It was the very first time I met my husband's parents, and I was more nervous than average, because my husband had pre-warned me that his father may not be willing to accept me into the family right away, as I am an American, Caucasian girl, and my husband's family is a predominantly non English speaking, traditionally cultured, Chinese people. In continuing my story, I'd like you to keep in mind that, in my husband's father's eyes, without ever meeting me once, I had already committed a great "faux pas" by marrying his eldest son just because of my different race and cultural differences, but even worse, my many past conversations on the phone with my mother and siblings-in-law were considered disrespectful and haughty on my part, because I spoke only English to them instead of Chinese. Not only that, but my husband had previously been married to a woman who bore him a son, which is viewed as extremely important in the Chinese culture and naturally made me a home wrecker, even if I did marry him six years after their divorce. Now that you understand the situation, let's go back to Thanksgiving day. My husband convinced me to spend the day at his parents home and cook a nice Thanksgiving dinner for them. He thought that if his family had a chance to experience my cooking, they just might loosen up on me a bit, as he thought my cooking was the best American food he had ever eaten. Food is also a very big deal in traditional Chinese culture, even non-Chinese food. As you may imagine, my mind was already spinning with negative thoughts about myself as to whether or not I would be able to pull something as big as a Thanksgiving dinner off without a hitch, especially for these critics in particular.  Anyway, winning the family over meant a great deal to me, so I nervously began cooking my very best Thanksgiving dinner with every trimming you can imagine, with the star of the meal of course being the big, beautiful turkey. After staying fairly well focused on the meal for most of the day, the twenty pound turkey was almost finished. I opened the oven to baste it, as I had done every half an hour for five straight hours, and that's when I realized my baster bulb had broken. The turkey had another thirty minutes to go, and it had to be basted. I mean, there was no way I was going to serve these people a dry bird and leave yet another bad taste in there mouths about me. I had to think of something fast. What would I do? Perhaps something logical like ladling the juices from the bottom of the pan onto the top of the turkey. Well, no. My nerves had long ago gotten the best of my logical thinking. So, instead, I got the bright idea of removing the bulb from the baster completely and using my mouth to gently suck the juice up the basting tube. Then, I thought, I could just hold the juice filled tube over the bird's top and let it flow out just like normal. Well, there were two things I didn't count on while conjuring this "bright" idea. The first thing was that as I was bent over the turkey sucking up the juice through the tube that my father-in-law would decide to come into the kitchen at that moment after spending all day not acting like I existed. The other thing I didn't factor in was the temperature of the juice. So, as I said, I was bending down with the basting tube in my mouth, slowly sucking the incredibly hot turkey juice  upward when good ole dad suddenly appears beside me and pats me on the back and asks me what I'm doing. Well, on top of my ever present anxiety, this unexpected pat on the back startled the heck out of me, and apparently my physical reaction to this was to suck faster for some reason, because that is exactly what I did. I sucked up the three hundred plus degree turkey juice into my mouth and immediately realized pain, so naturally, I spat. I spat out that turkey juice all over my beautiful Thanksgiving bird right in front of my judgmental father-in-law! The very next feeling I had besides pain was big time embarrassment. To make matters worse yet, I couldn't even apologize for my dim witted actions, because I had third degree burns in my mouth and was unable to speak. Needless to say, my face was red for not only one reason, but two. The only good thing I can say about this extremely embarrassing experience is that, apparently, my willingness to scald myself in the name of seeking the in-law's approval was enough for them to see what kind of a person I really am, which in turn won them over. Also, they actually ate the dinner I had cooked, including the bird, and they said that they had never had such flavorful American food. I learned many things that day, but the most important thing I learned was that I should never let the negative voices in my mind talk me into performing negative actions, and that being myself will always win more votes in the end. 

          At the beginning of "An Introduction to Rhetoric", Foss, Foss, and Trapp define rhetoric as being "bombastic words with no substance or trivial talk". To my very limited understanding, this definition carries with it very negative connotations, which I don't automatically think of when considering the word rhetoric itself. Thankfully enough, though, Foss et. al. go on to say that "rhetoric should not engender only negative connotations", but the opposite in that it has quite "a distinguished history of large positive meanings". Moving even further, the author's say that their definition of rhetoric "features the use of symbols by humans". I, however, am not that sure that I completely agree with either of these definitions. I certainly don't think that the "no substance" definition is correct, considering how much we use rhetoric in our day to day lives and how without it, we wouldn't be able to communicate. But, much deeper than that, I believe that rhetoric is not only our ability to communicate, but the very specific way in which we do it. For instance, what if I said "Hey, yo! Muhlhauser! Come gimme sum help wit dis stuff". Well speaking in this sort of slang would probably not invoke the same type of response as it would if I were to instead say "Excuse me, Doctor Muhlhauser. I need some help with this please".
          That being said, here are two definitions of the word rhetoric that I think are correct.
1. Rhetoric: The art or science of all specialized literary uses of language in prose or verse, including the figures of speech.
2. Rhetoric: (In Classical Oratory) The art of influencing the thought and the conduct of an audience.

Both definitions came from Dictionary.com. (URL  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rhetoric)

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