Epizeuxis: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for palilogia.
Crap, crap, crap, crap! My lego Tower of Babel was going to fall down. It was going down—in slow-motion and there was nothing I could do. I had been building it since I was 17. Now, I’m 19. It was 40 feet tall. It was built in my back yard. I was working on it when it went down.
It was Wrestler, our dog, that did it. He hadn’t been allowed in the back yard for two years while I worked on the tower. My little brother had let Wrestler out because he was mad at me for stepping on his Etch-A-Sketch. I had planned on buying him a new Etch-A-Sketch tomorrow. He just couldn’t wait. All my work down the tubes.
I had learned about the Tower of Babel in Sunday school—it made God mad and He made everybody speak different languages. I think God got mad because people were rivaling him with the tallness of their tower. My plan was to build a reverse Tower of Babel that would restore our common language. I had been working on the common language. It consisted of a blend of American, Australian, Canadian, British, and Belizian, blending together words like cricky, bloke, awesome, grim sleeper, and Eh?
I was going to mount a CB radio on top. I was going to ask for one for Christmas as the tower neared completion. I still needed to figure out how to mount the radio on the top of the tower. I had been using a ladder to build the tower, but at this point I had reached the limit of the ladder. I was thinking about a helium-filled balloon to lift me up. But, I was starting to think my project was doomed to failure.
Just then, the rower smashed into the ground. It cracked like an egg. Little men and women in robes and sandals came streaming out. One of them said, “Hi! My name is Saul and I’m from Babylon. Notice, we speak the language you invented! Even though things are a little rough there, we’re flying back to Babylon tomorrow. Thanks for everything.” I said, “You’re welcome.”
I was going crazy. I ran inside and asked my mother what she saw in the back yard. “oh” she said, “Your Legos thing has fallen over. It’s too bad—I thought you’d build it higher than five feet, but you tried. That counts.” I started screaming like a police siren and in between, screaming “no, no, no, no” and “cricky, cricky, cricky.”
POSTSCRIPT
It seems so long ago that my backyard project turned on me and lashed out with hallucinations that extended for two years. I am so medicated that I can’t tie my bathrobe or feed myself. I am fed with a spoon, almost always oatmeal. Talking about oatmeal, on the day it all came tumbling down, my brother put psilocybin in my oatmeal. The doctors say it had no effect since I had been suffering from delusions for years.
Life is complicated. Don’t trust your senses.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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