Mesarchia

Mesarchia (mes-ar’-chi-a): The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning and middle of successive sentences.

I started lifting weights. I started lifting my spirits. I started lifting myself! I made a contraption like a swing on a pulley. I would sit on the swing and pull myself up by the swing’s rope. I called it “Joey’s Pull-a-Muscle.” I got to the point where I would time each pull, trying to break my own record each time. In order to increase the challenge, I decided to put on weight by eating cake and pie and three large double-cheese Domino pizzas per day, with sausage, bacon, meatballs, and smoked shad toppings. After 6 months I went from 220-340 pounds. I bought a 5x spa towel and made Tick Tok videos of myself when I wasn’t lifting or eating. I got 600 likes for my “Seduction” video—in the video I slowly lifted the hem of my spa towel while wagging my finger and shaking my head “No.”

Then I met a girl on Tick Tok. She said she had been watching me and would love to come over to my apartment and pull my rope some afternoon. What she said sounded slightly sexually suggestive, but I was game for anything. So, I invited her over the following day at 1:00 pm. I would try to take a shower in preparation. Unfortunately, I got stuck in the shower. I stood there, wedged in, all night long.

Then, at exactly 1:00 pm there was a knock on my door. I yelled to her to come in. I guided her to the bathroom with my yelling. When she arrived at the bathroom door, I was stunned. She was wearing one of those inflatable a sumo wrestler suits, fully inflated. She pulled me out of the shower. I put on my spa towel and we sat on the couch. By the way: she was quite attractive: black hair, brown eyes, nice ears, straight teeth, small feet. That’s all I could see with the sumo suit covering her up.

“Would you let me pull your rope now?” she asked. Then it hit me—I had seen her face in the newspaper! Her name was Beth Grisley and she was being sought in connection with the brutal stabbing and dismemberment of the professional wrestler Two-Ton Tommy Tompowski! I stood in front of the open window and yelled “Come and get me!” She grabbed a steak knife off the coffee table and came running at me. At the last second I stepped aside. She would’ve flown out the window, but the inflated sumo suit wedged in the window. I called 911 and soon everything was settled.

As the dust settled, I thought to myself, never again will I invite a stranger over to my apartment to pull my rope. Never again will I make Tick Tok videos. As soon as I lose 100 pounds, never again will I get wedged in the shower.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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