Conduplicatio (con-du-pli-ca’-ti-o): The repetition of a word or words. A general term for repetition sometimes carrying the more specific meaning of repetition of words in adjacent phrases or clauses. Sometimes used to name either ploce or epizeuxis.
“Dive! Dive! Dive!” I was yelling in my head. I was standing on the diving board, knees shaking, terrified by the distance to the water below. It was a two-foot jump—the water was perfectly calm below. If I laid on the diving board it I could reach the water with my fingertips. When we installed the pool, we purposely had the diving board installed unusually low, in the hope its proximity to the water would help me get over my problem. The liquid is forgiving unlike the dirt that grew grass under my bedroom window.
When I was nine I had tied a towel around my neck and “flew” out my bedroom window in the name of “Truth, justice, and the American way.” I landed on my chest and broke most of my ribs. I spent five months in a hospital recuperating from the fall. I received no counseling. I just lay in bed thinking impure thoughts—thoughts about triple scoops of ice cream, endless candy kisses, French fries smothered in gallons of bright red ketchup, and more.
When I got out, all healed, I had trouble stepping off curbs. My mother had to push me. Getting out of cars was the same, only my mother had to pull me out. Anything I did that took me abruptly down terrified me. Both my mother and my father had to pull me screaming from bed in the morning and off the couch after watching TV at night. Eventually, I learned to do everything sitting on the floor and cross the street at curbless handicapped crosswalks. When I was old enough to drive, I had ramps installed that opened out of the sides of my car when I turned off the ignition. In fact, I had ramps installed everywhere I had to go up or down.
Now, here I was for the hundredth time trying to overcome my phobia by jumping off the diving board. Suddenly there was an earthquake. The pool water was sloshing around and the diving board was bouncing up and down. It pitched me into the water. As I was flying toward the water, I felt exhilarated. I felt like an Osprey or an Eagle. When I hit the water, the earthquake stopped. The water flattened out as I surfaced and looked around. The spell was broken. My phobia was cured!
I climbed out of the pool, walked to the diving board, and jumped again—the Eagle. I hit my head on the bottom of the pool. The pool’s water had been lowered by the quake’s sloshing effect. I was hauled out of the pool and revived by my sister.
I had the pool filled in by bulldozers. I resigned myself to my flattened existence. I live in a one-story ranch-style house—sitting, eating, and sleeping on the floor; avoiding curbs, and installing ramps.
My girlfriend Akiko has been a godsend helping me decorate.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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