Epitasis

Epitasis (e-pit’-a-sis): The addition of a concluding sentence that merely emphasizes what has already been stated. A kind of amplification. [The opposite of anesis.]

“You’re as big as a horse, as wide as a tractor trailer truck. You are big.” That’s what my gym teacher said whenever I squeezed through the locker room door. I looked like everybody in my family, with the exception of my mother, but no one else. Our roots ran back antiquity. Once believed to exist only in fairy tales, a group of us was discovered living in the Watchung Mountains of central New @Jersey—near the Short Hills Mall. They lived off the land—raccoons and deer, and apples and walnuts. They also grew small garden plots that were surrounded by blackberry brambles. For shelter, they lived in abandoned Colonial iron mines. But then, in the 1960s, when the world was loosening up, they came out of the woods to be accepted into the community. People yelled Trolls to your holes!” And “You smell.!” My grandfather Elton Gruff led the charge to a better future.

He mainstreamed: he got a passport, a job as a bouncer at a topless pole dancing joint, He shopped at the local Acme supermarket. He got a car with a front seat that went all the way to the back seat so he could fit. He met a woman on the roller coaster at Olympic Park—she was a “regular” person. They fell in love and got married. People protested, but they won their case in court and received a huge settlement from the state of New Jersey. Once they got married, they moved to Irvington and settled in a middle class neighborhood, nobody bothered them and thy lived a happy life.

I’ve done well. My biggest a best accomplishment, aside from getting all A’s in all my classes, is football. When coach talks about my size, he’s complimenting me. I am one of the team’s “biggest” assets. I play tackle—defensive and offensive. My major move on defense is standing up when the ball is snapped—like a stone column. I hold my arms out and I’m like an immovable broken turnstile. Every once-awhile I have to pick someday up and throw them back over the line of scrimmage. I love the thudding sound they make when they hit the ground. I try not to draw blood, but sometimes it just happens. On offense, I walk directly to the quarterback and push him down. If he throws a pass, I reach up and catch it. For a hand-off, I do a karate chop, often deflating the foot ball. I usually let lateral passes go, to make the game more exciting.

They installed a special seat for me in the school bus we take to away games and that I take to school. In addition, there are also big desks in all the classrooms. I think I owe it all to my grandfather.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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