Polysyndeton (pol-y-syn’-de-ton): Employing many conjunctions between clauses, often slowing the tempo or rhythm. (Asyndeton is the opposite of polysyndeton: an absence of conjunctions.)
I put on my socks, and my pants, and my shirt, and my belt, and my running shoes. It didn’t matter how far, or where to, I ran. My name is Victor and I am a jogaholic. I became a jogaholic when I was on the Albert Cramer High School track team. I ran the fifty yard dash, sort of like drag racing with your feet. I started running to the bus stop. I’d always get a window seat toward the front. I wore my jogging shoes constantly, only taking them off to scratch my athlete’s foot and rub on some EMUAID— a special blend of Emu fat, and watermelon juice, and floral scents—rose, peony, and jasmine.
At school, I ran to my classes. Once, I slammed into my wood shop teacher and a pint bottle of vodka fell out of his shop coat and broke on the floor. He made me clean it up. When I ran to the trash can with the broken shards of glass, Billy Stricken tripped me and I had to run to the school nurse’s office with a bleeding hand. She gently and firmly told me that I am a jogaholic. My running everywhere was a clear sign that I was afflicted. As I ran to the playground, I was hit with a sense of relief. Prior to my diagnosis, I thought there was something wrong with me because there was nothing wrong with me! All my friends were “sick” in some way. Marcy was cross-eyed. Tim still wore diapers. Melanie had a mustache. Reggie was a bed-wetter. Billy was schizophrenic, Fern had total-body eczema. Freddy wore rubber gloves. Suffice it to say, the list of maladys goes on and on, and on.
So, given the company I was in, I saw no reason to seek a cure. But the school reported my affliction to my parents, who had always been aware that something was so-called “wrong” with me.
As I was running from the bathroom to the living room, my father yelled “Stop!” He was holding a pair of lead deep sea diver boots. Each one weighed 20 pounds and they were designed to help keep the diver under water. My father told me to put them on. I did.
I could barely walk, let alone run. My father told me as long as I lived under his roof, I would wear the diver’s boots everywhere. I had trouble climbing the stairs to go to bed that night. But, when I got to my room and took off my boots, I ran around my room, wearing my cherished running shoes. I felt free.
On graduation day, to my father’s great sorrow, I removed my diver’s boots and donned my running shoes. I ran to the stage to receive my diploma and grabbed it like a baton in a relay race and kept on going. My dysfunctional and differently-abled friends cheered confirming my commitment to living as a jogaholic. Billy even waved his medication bottle over his head.
After running around aimlessly for a few years, I landed a job as a pinch runner for the Lancaster Roadrunners, a minor league baseball team. I love running out onto the field when I’m called to steal a base, or just run them. I have gotten married to a wonderful woman who has come up with creative ways to manage my malady. For example, she straps me into a wheelchair when we go shopping. We get a better parking place, plus I can’t run away. I’d wear my diver’s boots to the mall, but they are very tiring and too slow. However, both my wife and I wear diver’s boots at home. We move in slow motion around the house like a couple of sloths in love.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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