Diacope (di-a’-co-pee): Repetition of a word with one or more between, usually to express deep feeling.
I am lonely—too lonely—abysmally lonely. I feel like a cactus with ten-foot spines. I wonder how I got this way, surrounded by idiots, fools, and nitwits. Take Allen, for example. He hadn’t shined his shoes for weeks. I called him irresponsible and told him if he didn’t have them shined by the next time I saw him, I would kick his ass up and down the street. Shoe hygiene is at the top of the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, alongside self-actualization. I never saw Allen again. He’s probably wearing his disgustingly scuffed shoes and shaking his styrofoam cup for quarters on a street corner somewhere. Bye bye Allen the stain.
Then, there’s my former girlfriend Shiela. I told her if she got another tattoo, I’d throw her out on her ass. She got another tattoo, so I threw her out on her ass. It was a picture of me that she got off my Facebook page. I didn’t care. Enough is enough. She didn’t do what I told her to do—she didn’t do what’s right. How do you have a relationship with a disobedient little twit. She called me and told me we were going to have a baby. I told her “Good. Get my picture tattooed on it.” She started crying. I hung up.
My latest “friend” Arnold wanted to eat at “Lobo’s Steak House.” He really irked me “I’m a vegetarian you cretan!” He replied “We’ve just met. Sorry, I didn’t know.” Then I gave him what he deserved: “You should’ve asked you piece of crap. Get the hell out of here—go eat your damn meat with some other blood-stained creep.” He slammed the door as he left.
You can see from the examples that I have principles and take a zero-tolerance approach to their employment. Maintaining my integrity trumps everything. It is paramount. Being alone and lonely are tributes to my moral authority, no matter how miserable I am. I don’t think Socrates had any friends and he is a pillar of Western morality. Do you think he was happy? Ha ha! He drank hemlock—a poison that killed him. I’m no Socrates, but I can smell a rat, the the rats that keep coming into my life are just that, rats—big rats, stupid rats, shifty rats, rats.
Loneliness is the price I pay to be me. Always right. Never wrong. A pillar of perfection unsullied by unworthy human beings. Some day I will connect with somebody just like me. We will mesh. My “Yes” will be their yes. My “No” will be their no. We will be parts of the same string on a violin. We will both say “potato.”
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.
The Daily Trope 