Hard Rhymes,
Hard Times
by Edmund Conti
Gary Garopian
knew that what he suffered from had no name. He
hoped that one day scientists would discover a
name for his affliction. Then perhaps there would
be a TV drama about it and everyone would
understand it and be sorry they ever laughed at
him. He could visualize the story: our hero
endures early childhood taunts, sets out the win
the world’s longest race, discovers his hero,
Pete “Boom” Andeerson, suffers from the
same problem, convinces him to go public, wins
the respect and sympathy of the entire world.
Plus there would be a panel show afterward with a
a hotline number, I-800-POORKID.
That’s
all he wanted—that people knew he had a
problem. He didn’t hope for a cure. Or even
a Jerry Lewis marathon. And he certainly didn’tneed
special parking lots at the malls, marked “Rhymoplasty
Victims Only.” Though that would be nice,
especially if it meant having a special license
plate. But Gary knew that none of that would
happen until scientists discovered there was such
a thing as rhymoplasty—the uncontrollable
urge to rhyme during conversation. Gary first
realized he was different in the third grade when
his teacher barked at him, “You in the back
row, what’s your name?” and Gary
answered without thinking, “Gary Garopian,
what’s your game. He was sent to the office
where the vice-principal beat the hell out of him
and then sent him home where his parents finished
the job.
After many
beatings during the ensuing years, all the while
protesting, “What did I do?” Gary
figured out he suffered from rhymoplasty,
although not as much as his audiences. Of course,
he didn’t know it was called rhymoplasty,
because it wasn’t. It wasn’t
called anything, at least not anything known. If
there were other sufferers, they suffered in
silence. And if you were to say to one of them,
“You suffer in silence,” he would
probably reply, “I suffer in violence.”
Which was another tragic aspect of rhymoplasty,
bad rhyming.
Once,
desperate, Gary tried to seek help. But when his
doctor asked him, “What’s your problem?”
he was struck dumb. He knew of no rhyme for
‘problem.’ Later when he received a
bill for $200 from Lemuel Grosscat, MD, he
realized he should have answered. “I want
your job, Lem.” Not that it would have
helped. As he grew older and the beatings let up,
Gary’s head cleared a little and he saw that
he had a facility for rhyming. He took up poetry,
sending his pieces to various magazines listed in
Poet’s Market. He should have read the
listings a little more carefully. He could
have avoided more beatings, this time in the form
of verbal abuse from the magazines’ editors.
“If it rhymes, we don’t want it.”
“There hasn’t been a good rhymed poem
since 1873.” “If you subscribed,
you would know we don’t accept rhymes.”
That’s when Gary started writing free verse.
He noted at the same time that his problem was in
remission. He started answering questions, first
in unrhymed couplets, then in free verse,
enjambing frequently, and finally, answering in
prose-poem forms. And although his responses
were just as idiotic as ever the general
reaction from his listeners, while not
enthusiastic, was benign. Nowadays, if you were
to meet Gary in the street and ask, “How are
things, Garopian?” he would not say back to
you (as he once would have) “And how are
your things fallopian?” No, he would
more likely reply:
The wind blows in the
will-
ows (as the
philosopher sd)
& I
am fine.
And no one
would laugh.
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