Onomatopoeia (on-o-mat-o-pee’-a): Using or inventing a word whose sound imitates that which it names (the union of phonetics and semantics).
Boom, boom, boom. My heart went boom, boom, boom when I snorted the cocaine. Then I fell to the floor and started to twitch. Even though I was probably dying, and was worried about where I was going next, I felt great. The party kept going on around me. My buddies Nick and Jim dragged me out into the back yard and dumped me in a lounge chair by the pool. I couldn’t talk so I couldn’t ask them if they’d called 911. As I lay there twitching, I imaged I was making disco moves to the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive.” I wanted to be stayin’ alive, but I wasn’t optimistic. I had had rheumatic fever when I a kid, and my heart going boom, boom, boom was a bad sign. My pediatrician had told my mom if my heard went boom, boom, boom to start shopping for a headstone. My mother was not good at handling bad news, so she just ignored it. It wasn’t until my 21st birthday that she told me I had a bad heart because I was “old enough” to know.
So now, here I was in a lounge chair by a pool dying. All of a sudden Nick’s wife popped into the picture, standing with her legs apart at the end of the lounger. She said, “I always wanted to lie on a dying man, but you can’t always get what you want. I’ve never given up, and here I am.” She climbed on top of me. Her perfume smelled sweet. She kissed me and my heart went boom, boom, boom.
I woke up in a hospital bed. I had stayed alive. I gave up my “disco ways” and went to divinity school. Now, I’m a Minister at Boonton First Presbyterian Church. I still snort a tiny spoon load of cocaine as a prelude to my sermons. It makes me look more engaged and doesn’t hurt anything—I’m riding the glory train high on cocaine, taking my congregation higher, up that stairway to heaven.
POSTSCRIPT
Dr. Pendergast died of a heart attack mid-sermon one Sunday morning. His last words were “Boom, boom, boom” as he talked about Paul’s stroke on the road to Damascus.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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