Epistrophe

Epistrophe (e-pis’-tro-fee): Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.

My face looked silly. My clothes looked silly. My hair looked silly. No doubt, I was silly. I fit the dictionary definition: “lighthearted lack of seriousness.” Being serious was a serious problem. Ha ha!

It was my mother’s funeral. I decided to skip around her coffin singing “Knick Knack Paddy Wack” and jingling the little bells on my hot pants cuffs. My brother-in-law Duke didn’t think I was funny. He said, “Arnold, you are a total asshole” and punched me in the face a couple of times. As they were wheeling me to the ambulance I waved like the Queen Mother used to do and yelled “Rule Britannia!” Nobody laughed.

Nobody came to the hospital with me. My nose was broken in three places and Duke had knocked out one of my front teeth. Now that I was missing a front tooth, I talked like a hillbilly: “Can aah have uh shot a moonshaan?” I asked the nurse. I thought it was funny. She said, “Oh you poor man.” I pulled the sheet up from my feet, exposing my privates and saying “Peek-a-boo!” She threw my bedpan in my face and said “Peek-a-boo this pervert!” My silliness was going nowhere. I had my surgery and when home.

The next day, I had to have my tooth fixed. I went to the dentist and said “I need to see the Tooth Fairy.” I was just kidding, but the receptionist asked me if I had an appointment. I told her “No” and she told me to take a seat. After a few minutes, she said “Ok, you can go in now. Go through that door over there.”

I thought it was a joke, but I went through the door anyway. It was a bar. I recognized the Tooth Fairy immediately. She was sitting on a stool next to Thumbelina. Then, I saw Puss ‘n Boots sipping a martini at a table with a Troll. Tinkerbell was arguing with The Boy With the Moon on His Forehead—it had something to do with “mooning.” I went up to the bar to do my missing tooth hillbilly routine for the Tooth Fairy. She looked at me like I was crazy and tapped my gum gap with her wand, and “poof!” my tooth was restored. I thanked her, and started to leave, but I couldn’t move.

I woke up in a dentist chair. I felt my gums and my tooth was back in place! The dentist said “That anesthetic hit you pretty hard. Are you ok?” I had come back to my senses. I felt like doing something silly. I was at a loss so I just jingled my hot pants and slowly stood up. On my way to my Uber, I went up to the receptionist and gave her a quarter and told her I had found it under the dental chair’s headrest pillow. It was true. I jingled my hot pants bells and headed out the door.

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

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