Polyptoton

Polyptoton (po-lyp-to’-ton): Repeating a word, but in a different form. Using a cognate of a given word in close proximity.

My head was filled with unhealthy thoughts. It was time to head to the shrink’s and try to develop a strategy for making the thoughts go away. Doctor Pabst was amazing. She was beautiful. Also, she always gave me “medication” that brought me around. Two weeks ago I was totally nutso. I wanted to shoot my dog. I had become convinced he was making fun of me by sitting up and begging all the time, parodying my taking care of him. It was ghastly the way he wagged his creepy tail in a figure 6-6-6 and made whining sounds like my last girlfriend, Georgia, who had disappeared without a trace 6 months ago. I was briefly a suspect.

Well, Dr. Pabst saw that I was going over the edge and she gave me a pill that put me in a coma for a week. She kept me “stored” on her living room couch. Through the fog I could hear her talking softly in my ear. When I awoke my t-shirt was on inside out and it smelled like Dr, Pabst’s perfume, “Copay.” But, I was healed! The one-week coma had worked miracle—I loved my dog again and loved it when he begged and whined.

So, I told Dr. Pabst that that I was having unhealthy thoughts. She asked me what they were. I felt very uncomfortable telling her that I didn’t want to wipe after pooping any more. I had never been good at wiping, so I thought I should just give up entirely. Part of this came from my growing fear of toilet paper. I was afraid it would get stuck in my anus, dry, and harden into something like a cork that could only be removed with a corkscrew. I was terrified that my bowels would explode from the pressure of not pooping, probably at work, and kill me while making a horrific smelly mess, a mess so bad, that I would be transported to the morgue in a garbage truck.

Dr. Pabst nodded emphatically while I talked. When I got to the exploding bowels part, she said “Holy fu*k! You are as crazy as a bag of squirrels! I’m going to drill a teeny hole in your forehead. I will drill to your sanity center, and you’ll be fine. Don’t worry, I learned this technique in medical school in Belarus where we had plenty of “patients” to practice on, and the and the Belarusian version of the Hippocratic Oath permitted doing harm as long as your team leader told you to do so. So, take this pill and lay on the floor.

I took the pill and went into a coma for a month. When I awoke I had small hole in my forehead. It was plugged by a post erring with a peace sign mounted on it. Dr. Pabst told me not to pull it out or push on it or I would have a potentially fatal seizure. She kissed me on the forehead (on the peace sign) and asked how I was doing “baby.” That got my attention.

I told her I was fine—no more toilet paper horrors. She said that was good, and now we could finish what we had started. I asked what that was. She laughed and asked, as she pushed on the peace sign, which was some kind of off on switch, “Are you turned on?” I didn’t know what I was! I stood up and tried to talk but all I could do was emit steam and reach for the sky with both arms. When I raised my arms my pants fell down revealing skid marks on my underpants that could’ve been made by a tractor trailer truck, or race car tires.

She handed me a pill and told me to lay on the floor and take it. I followed her instructions. I must’ve been in a coma for a year. When I awoke Dr. Pabst had a baby. We had gotten married while I was in a coma—she told me we had to take an ambulance to Alabama where it’s legal to marry a person in a coma even if they are brother and sister. Who said Alabama is a conservative state?

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

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