Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.
I could not sleep. Thoughtlessly, I started counting sheep. Growing up and living in Queens, I had only a vague idea of what a “sheep” is. I had sung “Bah bah Black Sheep” in the second grade, but we didn’t talk about it.
I think I got the idea of counting sheep from a Bing Crosby song about counting your blessings—
“When I’m worried and I can’t sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep”
Even though he advocated counting blessings, sheep-counting caught my attention, even though I had no operative sheep concept. Blessings were too much of a challenge, and also, counting one’s blessings seemed a little arrogant and likely to keep me awake trying to decide whether I have any blessings, let alone count them.
So, I went with sheep. I latched onto sheep. I would sleep by counting sheep.
I decided it was high time I Googled “sheep.” They were cute, like pillows and clouds with legs. I watched dogs herding sheep. There were hundreds of sheep. How would I sort them out and determine which was which, so I could count them.
Then, I stumbled on a bunch of animated cartoons of sheep jumping over a fence one at a time. There were z’s symbolic of sleep flowing across the screen. Now I knew!
I would get in bed, close my eyes and count sheep jumping a fence, visualized in my head.
It did not work. In a matter of seconds the sheep fence set would disappear and be replaced by the hell catalogue of everything wrong with my life. So, sleep was beyond me.
So, I went to my doctor and she prescribed Daridorexant. It knocks me out. It keeps me knocked out. It is addictive. I go to bed at 6:00 pm now. My wife has to slap me in the face to wake me up in the morning. I drink four cups of coffee, and one amphetamine tablet that I buy from a guy that hangs out in an alley by my neighborhood bodega.
I am like a rocket by day and a down-filled pillow by night.
Life is good.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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