Diaphora (di-a’-pho-ra): Repetition of a common name so as to perform two logical functions: to designate an individual and to signify the qualities connoted by that individual’s name or title.
Ginger put “the ginger” in her stride. Ever since sixth grade there was a quality of vigor and energy to her step. It began when she took up baton twirling and marching with the school band. Mother had bought her a pair of white baton twirler boots to go with her baton.
Sadly, she couldn’t master the baton. When she practiced in her room, you could hear it repeatedly clatter to the floor. I used to sit in the living room and count the number of times the baton hit her bedroom floor. I was secretly happy. Mom wouldn’t even buy me a Superman lunchbox, or a cap pistol. Little did I know that the dropped baton was shaping into some kind of mental disorder in Ginger’s head.
One evening she came downstairs with the baton wrapped around her neck. She could hardly breathe. She was crying. Her right hand was scuffed and bleeding. We should’ve realized that she had flipped out, but we didn’t. With great effort, Dad removed the baton from her neck, asking her how the hell she managed to wrap it around her neck. She said, “Eduardo the 3rd.” Dad and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Again, we missed a sign that Ginger had gone psycho.
That’s when she started marching. She joined the middle school drill team “The Stomps.” She loved it and seemed to have gotten over the baton twirling thing. The only problem was that she started wearing her white boots and marching everywhere she went. It was as if she had become possessed by an evil marching spirit that wouldn’t let her walk anywhere. Her legs started swelling up from her thighs and calves becoming over-muscled. They had become like fenceposts. The stomping gait that had become her marching gait and it was frightening. It left imprints in the ground. It cracked sidewalks. It began taking a toll on our house’s oak floors.
Then, Ginger came home holding a mutilated Goldfinch by its wing. She had “stomped” it on the ground under our bird feeder. Two days later she showed up with a dead groundhog she had stomped. Her stomping had popped its eyes out. They were hanging over its face. She twirled the groundhog like a baton over her head. Blood splattered the kitchen walls. Then, I realized she was twirling the groundhog as if it was her baton.
It was time to send Ginger away to the mental hospital before she stomped a person to death. Dad wouldn’t hear of it. “Just give her some time. She’ll outgrow it. It’s just a phase.” At that point, I started to believe that Dad was crazy.
Ginger got really good at twirling dead animals—mostly Raccoons and Groundhogs that she had stomped to death. The groundhogs were seasonal. They hibernated in Winter.
She would perform in a wooden structure like a sandbox. The “sandbox” was filled mice that she stomped with her white boots to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” At the end of each show she would throw the dead animal into the audience and thank Eduardo the 3rd for providing guidance and encouraging her.
What was shocking to me was the fact there were people who loved Ginger’s performances. The audiences were huge and Ginger had a cult following. Although she was insane, Ginger was making a living at it. It made me question the line between sanity and insanity. I guess if you can make a living being insane, you’re as good as sane. At that point, I stopped worrying about her and learned to enjoy burning down buildings for a share of the insurance payout.
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.
The Daily Trope 