Homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-te-loot’-on): Similarity of endings of adjacent or parallel words.
“The itty, bitty, witty kitty made a sound like a diesel truck stuck in muck: Oh bad luck!” After I said this, I felt good, but my friends were looking at me with their mouths hanging open, puzzled and weirded out by what I had just said. These nonsense utterances were starting to fly out of my mouth, randomly, of their own accord. I needed help. I made an appointment with my psychologist.
“You’ve flipped your lid. You’re playing with a half a deck. You’ve lost your marbles. You’re going bananas. You’ve gone off the deep end.” These are the phrases my psychologist used to describe my state of mind. Then he said, “Just kidding. I like to do that every once in awhile to see how my clients react.” I stood up. I was going to punch him out for for messing me. My sanity was at stake and he was fu*king with me. He said “Sit down Herbert!” He was German. He sounded like a Nazi giving orders. I sat down.
He told me that I was suffering from one of the rarest psychological maladies in the world. He told me I was suffering from “Itty’s Compulsive Recollective Syndrome” (ICRS). It is a tendency to pile words together ending in “itty.” Its origin is completely bizarre—more than bizarre. It comes from not being breastfed as an infant, and becoming obsessed with the word “titty,” uttering its truncated cognates as symbolic of “titty’s” absence from your life. The “itty” words trigger thoughts of “titty” often plunging you into depression while at the same time giving you hope you may meet the “whole” titty and partake of your mother’s milk.
I thought he was joking, but he showed me the medical journal documenting ICRS. He told me the Japanese had developed a milk-giving mother sex doll for perverts. He recommended I get one and use it therapeutically to overcome my ICRS. It cost $4,000, a small price to pay to be cured.
My “mother” doll came in two weeks. I plugged in her charger and filled her milk tank with whole milk. The next morning I suckled her for breakfast. Her milk was warm and I drank my fill, had a cup of coffee and went to work. I had no “itty” episodes. I thought I was cured. I put “mother” away in the spare bedroom. Then, three days later I had another itty episode. I was dismayed. I plugged “Mother” back in and filled her milk tank, and had a good breakfast with her the next morning. I had no itty episodes at work.
This has been going on for five years. I don’t think I’ll ever stop needing the rubber mother titty. In a way it is like methadone.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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