Antanaclasis (an’-ta-na-cla’-sis): The repetition of a word or phrase whose meaning changes in the second instance.
You don’t care if my head is killing me, you still want to head to Jersey. We’ll be driving 90 billion miles while you’re driving me crazy with your non-stop blabber about Frank Sinatra, Jon Bon Jovi, Martha Stewart, and all the other Malox memory-makers from the so-called Garden State. But I‘ll drive us there as long as you pay for gas and tolls and food— good food, not the crap they serve on the Turnpike.
Ok honey, we crossed the state line. We’ve made it to the Homeland. So! Wait an ef’n minute! Holy shit, it’s Bon Jovi standing there! I’m pullin’ over to see if he needs help.
Are you ok Mr. Bon Jovi? Something the matter with your steel horse?
Bon Jovi: I’m wanted dead or alive. I missed a payment on my motorcycle. They put sugar in the gas tank: they give loan sharking a bad name. I almost hit that overpass abutment when the engine cut out. Here, hold this .357 while I push the motorcycle farther off the road.
Just then a black Cadillac pulled up. Somebody yelled “Drop the pistol shit stain!” I dropped the pistol.
I ran for my car with Bon Jovi right behind me. My wife was hiding in the trunk screaming. I yelled, “Give me the keys dammit!” She gave me the keys and we took off like a bat out of hell. I figured they would blow us off the highway, but when I looked in the rear view, two guys in black cashmere overcoats were dumping gas on Bon Jovi’s wheels. I looked again as one of them threw a lit match at the motorcycle, and BLAM it went up in flames. I floored it and we got the hell out of there.
As we drove away, I asked Bon Jovi why he would borrow money from a loan shark. After all, he’s a millionaire. He told me he’d lost touch with his New Jersey roots and was looking for inspiration—for the kind of Jersey-cred he’s known for. At that point a State Trooper pulled up on our ass. I pulled over. As I stood there with my hands up, I was reminded of what it was like growing up in New Jersey.
Needless to say we missed my mother-in-law’s birthday party, but Bon Jovi smoothed everything out with the law, and we made it back home safely.
Buy a print version of The Daily Trope! The print version is titled The Book of Tropes and is available on Amazon for $9.99.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
The Daily Trope 