Antanaclasis (an’-ta-na-cla’-sis): The repetition of a word or phrase whose meaning changes in the second instance.
I wasn’t feeling well. It was like I’d fallen down a wishing well and crash-landed in one foot of water. I had been up all night trying to do my incomes taxes and submit them by today. It should’ve so easy. I had purchased “Turbine Taxes” to do my taxes. On the site it sys “Get your taxes done, and go have fun! $1.00.” Every time I tried to submit my taxes, I got an error message from the IRS saying “Alert! your tax preparation software is part of a plot to overthrow the United States of America.” I didn’t believe it and resubmitted five or six times. It had to be a hoax.
Suddenly there was a pounding on my door and it flew open with the help of a battering ram. “Up against wall subversive scum!” a guy in black with a gas mask on and a MAC-10 pointed at my head yelled. He pointed at my laptop computer and yelled “We are confiscating your little tool of treason and treachery.” “But my taxes aren’t done yet” I said, my voice cracking. “What, are you trying to be funny, wise guy?” he said, tasering me in the neck and stomping on my foot. I passed out for a second and fell to the floor temporarily paralyzed. I could hear them talking as they pretty much packed up my entire house—furniture, carpets, washer-dryer—pretty much everything.
I heard one of them say “‘Turbine Taxes’ rock! This has got be the most sophisticated technologically advanced computer scam ever perpetrated!” I was slowly regaining consciousness. These guys were crooks, not government agents. I was blind-ass angry. I had a loaded Glock in my desk. If I could get my hands on it, I could shoot the shit out of all five of them. Then, I realized they were wearing bullet proof vests. It would have to be head shots. I didn’t know whether I could do it. Then, my cat Worthless started hissing and yowling in the back bedroom. He sounded like a police siren. The robbing bastards yelled “Shit” and ran out the back door empty handed. One of them dropped his weapon! I crawled and grabbed it, got to the back door and pulled the trigger. It went “click.” It wasn’t loaded. The marauders were fake, although the Taser had done a number on me.
I bought Worthless a genuine diamond-studded collar (which he immediately pulled off), a five-pound bag of catnip, an aquarium where he could fish for tropical fish, and a heated kitty bed I knew he would never use. I’d always thought of Worthless as this “thing” who would steal my place on the couch, jump up on my bed at 3:00 am, and puke on the carpet every couple of months. Boy, was I wrong. Worthless had saved our home. I changed his name to Claws.
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 