Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.
Snow was falling. Night was falling. I was falling. I had slipped off of “Life’s End.” It was a fifteen-hundred foot drop off a cliff. So, I had some time to think while I was falling. Nobody had gone over the cliff for 10 years. In fact, it was a disoriented lemming that last fell off the cliff, and now, it was me.
Nearing death, things started flashing before my eyes—the time I pulled off Santa’s beard and destroyed my Christmases forever. The time I lit my car seat on fire, playing with Dad’s BIC on a family trip to Canada. Trying to ride my hamster Tawny and crushing her on the kitchen floor. Gluing my hands in my mittens so I wouldn’t lose them.
Suddenly, I could see the ground. Two seconds, and I would be dead.
I felt something grab me! It was a net! I would live.
I knew why I had fallen! Why? Because I thought I knew better than the danger signs with pictures of skulls posted all around Life’s End. Plus, There there was no railing, just the abyss. Add the snow, and the darkness, well, anybody with a brain would’ve stayed away from the edge. But not me.
I had a brain, but some of it was missing. When I was 10, I had been injured in a clamming accident on the clam flats on River Road outside of Damariscotta, Maine.
My brother had accidentally hit me over the head with a clam fork and sunk 5 tines into my brain. I lost my sense of smell, and worse, my ability to foresee. So, I have trouble managing consequences. I usually travel with a minder who says “watch out” and keeps me from acting foolishly. But, my insurance had been voided when I was fired from “Only Bunkbeds,” and along with that, I lost my minder. I replaced him with a girlfriend. She didn’t cost anything, but she wasn’t as observant as my minder was, to wit, I lost two fingers on my left hand in a blender accident, got a tattoo of a fly on the tip of my nose that made me chronically cross-eyed, got my head stuck in a bucket like a bear, fell out a window, etc. So, we broke up and I was going to try to go solo. I was on my own, suffering numerous unforeseen consequences. I was trapped underneath my bed for 2 hours, until my mother pulled me out. I burnt my feet, toasting them in my fireplace. And now, the cliff.
Thank God for the net at the bottom of “Life’s End.”
Now, I’ve joined a support group called “Watch Out!” It is run by my former minder. There were a lot of stories told there. One of my favorites was the man who kept walking in front of cars. He stopped coming to meetings after one week. We all figured he was dead. Then, there was the woman who said she had 172 cats. She smelled like “Fancy Feast” white fish, had kitty litter in her hair, had a prescription catnip inhaler, and purred if you got to within 2 feet of her. We don’t know how she fits the group’s “Watch Out” theme, but she’s welcome anyway, just as long as she sits by an open window.
Currently, we are learning how “things lead to other things.” The first exercise we did was “The Pinch.” We pinched ourselves and became mindful of the fact that pinching “causes” pain. That is, first, there is the pinch, then there is the pain. The pinching exercise is a small step along the way to knowing how to “avoid or seek a given outcome.” I am optimistic I’ll get there.
POSCRIPT
Mr. Rollins, our narrator, died two days ago from a concussion received after wearing roller- skates while taking a shower.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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