Antanaclasis (an’-ta-na-cla’-sis): The repetition of a word or phrase whose meaning changes in the second instance.
It was my room, but it had no room. That’s all I had. It was all I could afford living in New York City. It was like my dorm room in college, only smaller. My bed was the size of a closet door. I had a cube-shaped refrigerator that looked like a black hassock with a door. All my “cooking” was done on a hot plate or in a microwave smaller than my refrigerator. I had one electrical outlet. That’s where I plugged in my appliances. The refrigerator stayed plugged in always. My kettle and microwave changed places when I needed to use one or the other, or to charge my phone at night. I had one chair. It was red and was smeared with different-colored stains from years of use without cleaning. It was a recliner, so I could have a guest visit and stay over night. I had a tray table that I used to eat my meals from, watching movies and scrolling through Instagram on my phone. There was a toilet, a sink and a shower lined up against one wall. The shower was a six-foot high rectangular metal box with a curtain. I had one window overlooking the air shaft and walked up eight floors to get to my little chunk of New York living!
In the past four months I had been gently mugged nine times on my building’s stoop in broad daylight by the same person. I’ve given his description to the police so many times I have dreams about dancing with him at the techno music club around the the corner. My bicycle was stolen when I forgot to bring it up to my apartment, where I kept it hanging from the ceiling. The windows have been broken out of my car twice. Some crazy women keeps jumping out of the alley by my building and yelling at me for not making the child support payments. If she keeps it up, I’ll probably make the payments just to get her off my back. The night before last I saw a homeless man pee on the subway floor, followed by a super-fart that woke a guy up who was sleeping in his seat. He must’ve been a Veteran because he yelled “incoming” and put his head between his knees while the homeless man held out a styrofoam cup and started singing the song about piña coladas.
That did it. I had to get the hell out of NYC before something really bad happened to me—like turning into a paranoid loser, a vigilante, or a cab driver. But then there was Shiela from work. She would sit on my desk and let me look up her dress. I asked her out at least twenty times and she always said “No way!” This morning she was late for work and was not dressed nicely at all. Then, I had the biggest shock of my NYC life: Sheila was the “crazy” women who jumped out of the alley demanding child support payments from me!
That night, l packed my meager belongings. I had heard a song about going to Kansas City on the XM 60s station. It sounded like a pretty cool place. The lyric, “They got some crazy little women there” was a little troublesome. I just had to hope they weren’t as crazy as Shiela. I was going to Kansas City; Kansas City here I come.
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Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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