Category Archives: conduplicatio

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.

I was crazy. My life was crazy. Everything was crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. But I didn’t believe I was crazy. That’s what made me crazy. They called me paranoid and schizophrenic. But I was neither.

There was a man named Bogey who wore a picnic table tablecloth who followed me around with a lit cigarette lighter and a toy plastic horse. He had demonic eyes and said in a squeaky voice “Get moving.” I would walk faster and he would walk faster until, eventually, we’d be running. I was repeatedly thrown out of the mall, train and bus stations, and baseball stadiums for running. The worst was when he chased me in the airport and I got thrown out and missed my flight—it cost me thousands of dollars in missed flights and business meetings.

When Bogey waved the plastic horse at me, I fell to the floor writhing like a snake and singing the “Star Spangled Banner.” This got me more than kicked out—it got me a trip to the Nut House. I explained that it was a rare seizure that was genetically based and inherited from my great grandfather who was “Amazonian” (I made this up). Usually, I stayed over night for observation and was freed the flowing day. When I had to stay longer, I texted my fake lawyer Marley. He was seven feet tall and scared the hell out of people. He never failed to get me released on the spot. I would usually see Bogey outside and we’d start all over again, running through a mall.

My schizophrenia was hard to cope with, especially in my romantic life. I would frequently become a new version of me, just when my girlfriend was getting used to the old version. I started naming myself like a computer operating system, like Billy 6.8. It helped her keep up with both old and new versions of me. Billy 4.0 was loving and gentle. Billy 5.1 was a sadistic loser. Eventually my girlfriend walked out on me. She claimed I was like a merry-go-round that was too fast and made her dizzy. Billy 7.3 wanted to kill her. “I” couldn’t help it—I was crazy. Remember?

Billy 7.3 developed a plan—a ruthless and complicated plan—to kill her. I would wrap her up in rubber bands and make her into a human yo-yo that I would throw off the roof of the 10 story building where I lived. Billy 2.0 intervened and sabotaged 7.3’s plans. He quoted the Bible—Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians and a shitload of Proverbs. That was it. I affected Billy 2.0 and put Billy 7.3 away somewhere way back in the back of my head. I might’ve killed him.

Since I have started taking “Suppressors” and my mental things have flattened out, Bogey is gone and the “Billy Versions” have flattened into one—Version 2.0. I have become a street-corner preacher. I sell glow in the dark crucifixes and urns made out of plastic wine glasses. I also yell proverbs at passersby, informing their spiritual improvement.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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.

Ho, Ho, Ho! I did it again. It was at my brother-in-law’s funeral. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Ho, Ho, Ho!” That’s how it went, but I could not help it. I had come down with “Santa-Clausis” after sitting on Santa’s lap and telling him what I wanted for Christmas. When I left, Santa’s I said “Ho, Ho, Ho” and my mother thought it was humorous and cute. But then, I saw a bird squished in the street and said “Ho, Ho, Ho.” My mother didn’t think it was cute and admonished me, but I couldn’t help myself—the worse it was the harder I laughed. Like the time an elderly woman fell out of her second-story window and died at my feet with her head cracked open. I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes. I was beat up by the crowd that gathered.

For the past twenty years I’ve been tying to cure myself of “Santa-Clausius.” I’ve come close—once I only giggled when a kitten was run over by a steamroller. I thought I was on the road to recovery. I wasn’t. The next day I saw a man’s taco stand go up in flames with him in it. I laughed a full fifteen minutes. I felt like something had a hold of me, making me laugh.

Finally, I went to see a gypsy. She told me that the only cure is the blood of a Santa. She gave me a syringe. Christmas was only a week away so there were plenty of Santas to “draw” on. She told me to bring the blood back as soon as possible after I drew it.

I went to the Santa shack in the park. Wearing a balaclava, I burst in the door, knocked a kid off his lap and stabbed him in the leg with my needle and filled it to the brim. I gave it to the gypsy and she injected it into me. Immediately, my white beard fell off and I lost 40 pounds. The gypsy pulled a white mouse out of a cage and smashed it with a hammer and killed it. I didn’t laugh. I was cured!

After that, I hammered a mouse every month to make sure I was still cured. No laughter. No Santa-Clausius disease.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.