3. The Cultural/Reversal
“Reversal” is a literary/theatrical term that describes the point at which the action takes an unexpected and surprising turn. Surprise is the essence of humor and of entertainment in general. The Cultural/Reversal module is a story from life that illustrates a point through surprise. The really good ones are never forgotten.
Here is an example:
Ferocious Love
One day several years I was relaxing in my hammock in our screened living room in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador.
Through our palmetto hedge alongside the house came Smoky, a neighbor’s big, kindly old lab mix, looking for expressions of friendship. He had no clue that Fluffy, our mama cat was under our house nursing a new batch of kittens.
Smokey sniffed his way toward the corner of the house where Fluffy was and I thought, “This could be exciting.” I was completely unprepared for the level of excitement to which the situation arose.
Fluffy came out from under the house like a furry cannonball, revved up like a chainsaw at full throttle, wailing like a siren. She landed on Smokey’s back like a jockey, clawing with all fours, biting and screeching at the same time. Smokey, believing he was under attack by a pack of panthers, ran out of the yard full at tilt, yelping, with Fluffy riding, clawing and biting all the way. Fluffy bailed off at the property line, but Smoky wasn’t convinced she was gone even a quarter-mile down the road. I didn’t hear the yelping actually stop. It just faded away in the distance.
Later I thought to myself, fascinating, isn’t it, how God designed into Fluffy such a powerful expression of His ferocious love for his children, and the terrible danger to any power that threatens them.