Homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-te-loot’-on): Similarity of endings of adjacent or parallel words.
I dropped my bowling ball on my foot, but that wasn’t all. It must’ve fractured my toe. It was the 10th frame. If I got a strike, I would have two more balls, and I would win it all—the trophy, the $500, and the adulation of the bowling groupies who were starting to look at me with hungry stares. I had had my eye on Leda throughout the entire tournament, fantasizing about kissing her long curved neck. But right now, I was in a crisis. My toe was killing me. It was like somebody had poured sulphuric acid on it and it was bubbling away inside my bowling shoe.
Lance Prono, my chief rival since we started bowling in the sixth grade, looked at me menacingly and said, “If you don’t roll that ball in ten minutes, you’re disqualified Borjack, and I have a shot at winning the tournament.” After he said this, he held his bowling ball over his head with two hands and pumped it up and down, and spun around on one foot, mimicking my injury and talking like Elmer Fudd: “Boo hoo mommy I hoot my whittle foooty.”
That did it. I tore off my bowling shoe. My toe had started to swell. There would be no way I could make a tenth-frame strike, limping to the line and rolling my ball in agony. I made my way to the men’s room, dragging my foot like the mummy in the old movie. I looked in the mirror. There I was in my turquoise and black bowling shirt with my name in script, appearing backward in the mirror: pihC—Chip. Hoping the swelling might go down, I stuck my bare foot in the toilet and flushed it to cool the water down. I was crying like a baby, like I did whenever my hopes were thwarted. Call me a crybaby, but I didn’t know what else to do.
The men’s room door opened and Leda was standing there. She saw my foot in the toilet and she started laughing uncontrollably. Snot was pouring out of her nose. She wiped a little off her lip and told me through her laughter to take my foot out of the toilet and dry it off with a paper towel. Then, she wiped the snot on her finger onto my toe and ran out the door.
Nothing happened from Leda’s snot, but the toilet’s cold water helped my toe quite a bit. I walked out of the men’s room without a limp, wearing one shoe. I picked up my ball and rolled it. I hit a strike. If I could strike the bonus frame, I’d win the tournament and bowl a perfect game. I saw Leda out of the corner of my eye. Her nose was still running. Then, Prono yelled “You stink, loser baby boy.” I didn’t respond. I rolled my ball. I pulled a 7-10 split—the bane of all bowlers’ existence. Some people say that Jesus bowled a 7-10 split at the Last Supper, courtesy of Judas planting a piece of silver on the lane.
I did what I had been taught to do by my high school bowling coach Mr. Rollings: summon Thor the god of rolling thunder and patron of bowlers and bowling alleys. I looked up and begged: “Please Thor, let me make this split.” Nothing happened. I may have alienated him somehow—maybe because I wore earplugs at the lanes. Anyway, I was on my own. I rolled my ball, trying to hit the seven pin so it would fly sideways and take down the ten pin. I failed.
But Prono didn’t beat me. In his final final chance to win the tournament, the rear seam of his of pants ripped as he bent over to pick up his ball, revealing his Yosemite Sam underpants. Then, just as he went to roll his ball, his pants fell down! He fell on his face and his ball veered into the gutter and slowly rolled out of sight. I won the tournament!! I thanked Thor.
I looked around for Leda, but she was gone. I found a used Kleenex where she had been sitting. I took it home with me, pressed it in my scrapbook, and drew a big red heart around it.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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