I tried to use all three forms of argument on George when, at the age of 7, he insisted on wearing shorts to school in the middle of winter. First I laid some ethos on him with my stern fatherly character: “You have to wear pants because I am your father and I told you to.” But he just looked at me with tears in his eyes.
Next I tried logos: “Pants will keep your legs from chapping,” I said reasonably. “You’ll feel a lot better.”
“But I want to wear shorts.”
So I resorted to pathos. I pulled up my pant legs and pranced around. “Doh-de-doh, look at me, here I go off to work wearing shorts.
Don’t I look stupid?”
“Yes,” he said, continuing to pull his shorts on.
“So why do you insist on wearing shorts yourself?”
“Because I don’t look stupid. And they’re my legs. I don’t mind if they get chapped.”
Oh, my. He had done me one better with ethos (I don’t look stupid), logos (They’re my legs — you don’t have standing in this case), and pathos (Stop worrying — I’ll deal with the pain issue). He was also making his first genuine attempt to argue instead of cry. I couldn’t possibly let him lose this one.
“All right,” I said. “You can wear shorts in school if your mother and I can clear it with your teacher and the principal. But you have to wear snow pants outside. Deal?”
“Deal.” He happily fetched his snow pants, and I called the school. A few weeks later the principal declared George’s birthday Shorts Day, and she even showed up in culottes. It was mid-February. We all had reached a comfortable — rhetorically comfortable, at least — kind of consensus, a belief in our decision by the group or community.
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