Category Archives: traductio

Traductio (tra-duk’-ti-o): Repeating the same word variously throughout a sentence or thought. Some authorities restrict traductio further to mean repeating the same word but with a different meaning (see ploce, antanaclasis, and diaphora), or in a different form (polyptoton). If the repeated word occurs in parallel fashion at the beginnings of phrases or clauses, it becomes anaphora; at the endings of phrases or clauses, epistrophe.

My truck was dead. My Christmas Cactus was dead. Worst of all my goldfish Sparkle was dead. We had been living together for 12 years. I was 10 when I stole him from the pet store and brought him home in a baggie and dumped him in my bathroom sink. Then I found a pitcher in the kitchen cupboard and Sparkle had a new home. I called him Sparkle because he sparkled—his orange scales were like so many sunsets decorating his sides. Now he was dead. I ground him up in the garbage disposal and sent him to the big fish pond in the sky where he will have eternal life among the catfish, sunfish, polliwogs, and frogs. Bless you Sparkle.

Then there’s my truck—faithful Buck the Truck. I rode the highways and byways in Buck, stealing mail and packages from peoples’ front porches. I fenced so many valuable things at “Humming Fence Goods and Services.” My friend Stewy ran the business which he had inherited from his father who was serving twenty years to life. It’s unfair. He shouldn’t even be in prison. Everybody knows that Stewy’s mother was decapitated by a faulty chainsaw that Stewy’s father was waving around. He spun into Stewy’s tied up mother and the chainsaw wouldn’t turn off. Stewy’s mother was tied up because his father was practicing knot-tying for his motorboat license. Even though Stewy’s mother was having an affair with the mailman, Stewy’s father was ok with it. He only threatened to kill him three times. Stewy’s mother was threatened on a daily basis but she took it in stride—she knew that Stewy’s father was just kidding.

Anyway, my tuck had rusted so badly it collapsed in the driveway in a tangle of oxidized metal. The rust had started with the bullet hole in the driver’s side door and slowly infected the whole truck. The bullet was meant for me, but it missed and hit my little brother in the shoulder. It didn’t kill him, thank God, but it killed his prospects for being a professional golfer. He was bitter for the rest of his life. He ended up selling used cars at “Smarty Arty’s Rolling Rods.”

I had had my Christmas Cactus nearly my whole life. It was given to me 10 minutes after I was born. I was too little to appreciate it, but as I got older, I appreciated it more and more. It had beautiful reddish-orange flowers that poked out of the petals’ tips like little fists. I named my cactus Calvin and watered him once a week. This went on for 33 years. Then, two days ago he dropped dead—literally. All his leaves fell off, piling up around his pot. Today, I put Calvin in a paper shopping bag and threw him on the pile of crap in my back yard. Now, when I look out the kitchen window I feel a twinge of sorrow, but I’m too lazy to move him somewhere else. It’s horrible.

The fish. The truck. The plant. There’s nothing I can do except fill the void with new versions of the fish, the truck, and the plant. I’m going “fishing” at the pet store this afternoon. Equipped with a zip-loc bag, I’m sure to score a new Sparkle. My brother is setting me up with a “broken in” 1992 Ford pickup. Aside from the missing headlights, the “relaxed” bench seat, rusted rims, and missing truck bed, it’s good to go. I’m excited—it comes with a complimentary quarter tank of gas!

The Christmas cactus is a real challenge. I headed off to Lowe’s. They had baby Christmas cacti lined up under a purple grow light. Security had been tightened after a rash of yard tool robberies. Since people are no longer able to hire illegal immigrants to do their landscaping, they have do their own. The tools are expensive, so they steal them.

I got an idea!

I yelled “I saw a Venezuelan guy with tattoos, over there!” I pointed toward the other end of the store. All the security people ran to the other end of the store. I grabbed the cactus and ran out the door, jumped in Buck II, and drove home.

I was whole again. My grief was vanished.

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.

Traductio (tra-duk’-ti-o): Repeating the same word variously throughout a sentence or thought. Some authorities restrict traductio further to mean repeating the same word but with a different meaning (see ploce, antanaclasis, and diaphora), or in a different form (polyptoton). If the repeated word occurs in parallel fashion at the beginnings of phrases or clauses, it becomes anaphora; at the endings of phrases or clauses, epistrophe.

I went for a little walk for a little while. I walked from my back door to my little garden. My garden was a 4×4 box that I built out of scrap lumber from my picnic table when I built it myself. My pride and joy was the corn stalk in the middle of the garden. It was 8 feet tall. The corn cobs were as big as bakers’ rolling pins. In addition to that, I had tiny tomatoes, the size of blueberries, and “Holy Cow” carrots, genetically modified, three feet long and deep orange, almost red. I built a five-foot high fence around my little garden to secure it against marauding herbivores.

I hired a kid from the local college to stand guard over the garden at night. I pitched him a tent and ran an extension chord out to the tent. He had his own sleeping bag and mattress. I gave him a .20 gauge shotgun and told him to shoot “anything” posing a threat to the plants.

The first night a shot rang out. I ran outside and he ran up to me yelling he had shot a giant 5-foot rabbit. We ran over to where it was supposed to be. There was my neighbor Mrs. Shmed lying on the ground. She was unscathed but terrified. She had fainted. She had been sleepwalking.

I took the gun away from the kid. I gave him one of those stadium horns and told him to blow it if there was trouble. At around 2:00 am the horn went off. The kid was yelling for help. He sounded really scared. I looked out the kitchen window and was shocked to see a six-foot tall rabbit. It had the kid against a tree and was punching him and kicking him. I grabbed the shotgun and ran out the back door. When it saw me, it turned away from the kid and came toward me. I shot it 6 times. I killed it. I thought it might be good to eat, so I field dressed it and hung it from a tree limb in the back yard. I wasn’t going to tell anybody about the giant rabbit—I didn’t want a bunch of scientists snooping around my yard asking questions. It was bad enough that we almost killed my neighbor, but this was over the top.

Around noon the next day, a game warden showed up at my door. Somebody had reported gunshots coming from my property the previous night. He asked to have a look around. When he got to the back yard and saw the giant rabbit hanging there, he whistled and said “Holy shit.” Sir, that’s not a rabbit, it’s a kangaroo.” The kangaroo had escaped from Coalville Zoo. Its name was Tony. I was advised to leave town for five or six months, until things cooled off. Otherwise, my life was in jeopardy—Tony was a beloved fixture at the zoo and the real culprit was the person who let him out of his cage. The warden started crying and fiddling with his gun. I thought for sure he was going to shoot me.

I put up a plaque for Tony in the zoo. It says “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” his name is inscribed along with his dates of birth and death. It had a collection box that says “Save the Kangaroos” on it. I met an Aussie there one day. He was laughing. He told me kangaroos are considered vermin where he comes from—they cause fatal accidents, they cover the ground with their poop, and they assault peole.

I took the collection box off of Tony’s plaque.

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.