WE HAVE A SITUATION!

"Tim, it's 2am, and as I walked past your room on the way to the bathroom, I noticed that your light is on. As I went to turn it off, I noticed that your bed is empty. As I walked to the living room, I also noticed you were not sleeping on the couch. I also noticed that you are not making a midnight snack in the kitchen. But what disturbs me the most is that the car seems to have driven itself down the driveway. This all leads me to believe it was indeed not stolen, but that YOU did the driving. So, Tim, tell me, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU AT TWO IN THE MORNING?"

This is an approximation of what the phone speaker blared at me in my father's voice one summer night as I was  rapidly rushing out the door of my friend Matt's house, slipping on by boots and stumbling towards my car. About two hours before, I had received a call from Matt, telling me that he needed my urgent help. That was, he needed my urgent help to eat a crave case that he had impulsively bought during that time of the night where hunger precedes wisdom, and, truth be told, I was hungry for tiny little burgers and not very sleepy at all.

The rhetorical situation according to Blitzer is thus: The exigence is, of course, that my Dad would likely murder me. The audience would certainly be both of my parents, as I'm sure that my dad's yelling would have woke up the entirety of the house as well as the neighbors across the street. The constraints were that I needed him to believe that I was not out smoking dope, drinking moonshine, or having copious amounts of unprotected pre-marital sex.

My very rhetorical reply was, of course, "ummm..."

His was,"GET HOME RIGHT NOW. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200 DOLLARS."

As I was already out the door, I was certainly abandoning the theoretical game of monopoly that my Dad so frequently references in times that haste is of the essence. I quickly mumbled something about being already en route, and hung up. As I open the car door, I had a realization. I quickly ran inside and grabbed four burgers and rushed back out the door. As I pulled in the driveway, I saw the porch light was on and the chair was occupied by a very angry father with a bristly mustache and a glass of whiskey in his hand. As my father does not normally drink, I new the rhetorical situation was very grave indeed. as I pulled open the screen door, the mouth underneath the angrily jutting lip hair said, "Well. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Do you want a burger?"