Conduplicatio (con-du-pli-ca’-ti-o): The repetition of a word or words. A general term for repetition sometimes carrying the more specific meaning of repetition of words in adjacent phrases or clauses. Sometimes used to name either ploce or epizeuxis.
I decided to get away—to get away from it all. “It all” was my job. I worked in a breakfast cereal mill operating the flake-pounder, pounding away, flattening flakes and moving them down the line on a dirty old conveyer belt that’s been moving cereal flakes since cereal flakes were invented somewhere in Michigan hundreds of years ago. I’d been running the same flake-pounder since I graduated from high school—that was 16 years ago. Even though I could have all the breakfast cereal I wanted, that just wasn’t good enough any more. Last year, I started eating scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast—breakfast that should’ve been cereal, but I didn’t care any more. I was breaking away. So, here I am holding a yard sale, a week before my official resignation. My boss shows up and sees the cereal bowl I was awarded for “ten years of loyal service.” It’s up for sale for twenty-five cents. He looks at me like I should be dead, and buys the bowl. He throws it on the sidewalk and it shatters into fragments, one of which hits my neighbor Barbara in the forehead. She screams in pain and my boss starts running to his car, which isn’t easy—he’s 5’ 6” and weighs around 300 lbs. Suddenly, he made a grunting sound and fell writhing to the ground. He dropped his car keys. I saw my chance. I motioned to Barbara, I grabbed the keys off the ground, and we got in Boss’s Maserati and took off. We stopped at a convenience store for supplies. When I opened the trunk to put the groceries away, we saw a large suitcase. I opened it. It was filled with hundred-dollar bills. There was also a photo of the boss standing behind a table piled high with cocaine. That’s when we decided our future was set. We had evidence that would put the boss away forever. We knew he couldn’t report what had happened on my lawn—he would be nailed. Barbara and I hugged, got back in the boss’s Maserati, and took off for the tropics, AKA Key West, where we were married, lived, and had three lovely children.
Barbara passed away three years ago. Our children are grown, and successful with families of their own. You are reading this now because I have passed and left a provision in my will that this story be made public so people can see that sometimes crime pays. With me and Barbara it all happened on the spur of the moment. If we had planned it, we would probably have been caught. Thanks Boss!
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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