Sometimes, the English language gets it right. The “b” in “subtle” is a nice touch. However, a language this wordy is bound to get it wrong sometimes. The word “unnecessary” is too long, for example, and shouldn’t “onomatopoeia” sound like the concept it describes? The word could be shorter, too, like “hum” or “buzz.” Maybe it would stretch to two syllables, like “murmur” or “yodel.” Unfortunately, English is immune to logic. Since we’re talking literary terms, here’s a metaphor for you: English is a thrift store donation bin piled with castoffs from other languages. Although onomatopoeia sounds like a fancy Greek dessert or the sound a dog makes while dreaming, it’s a fancy term for a sound-effect word, often highlighted in poetry.
Most of us encounter onomatopoeia, that gangly peacock of a word, in middle school. My memories are tinted with the same industrial beige the classroom walls were painted. Mrs. Wagner is drawing words in large cartoon fonts on the chalkboard. ZOOM! CRACKLE! Her eyes are wild with manic energy as she faces the class and calls for more examples.
I remember dutifully writing the word in my notebook, marveling at the numerous “Os” in my sloppy cursive. A smarter student would have puzzled over the inconsistency of those O sounds. Across the room, my friend Damien was playing with his father’s wedding ring. The whole class period, he spun it on his desk or twirled it around a pencil.
After class, he told me, almost boasting, that his parents were getting divorced, although that didn’t explain why he had the ring. It was a plain, dull gold artifact from the world of adults. It wasn’t a cursed object, but it carried a shadow of tragedy, and it certainly eclipsed anything I owned in terms of value. I didn’t ask to touch it, partly because I sensed he wouldn’t let me. My parents were still married, although their fingers had swelled to the point where removing their rings was impossible anyway.
The next day, and the next, Damien carried the ring like some personal hurt to be nursed and fiercely protected. Maybe it was a show; back in middle school, everything had a whiff of performance, but when he started bouncing it off lockers and chasing it down the hall, he ignored everyone, like we were a crowd in a dream. I couldn’t imagine my parents divorcing, but from the expression on his face, his was a tragedy that dimmed the world.
Our classroom floors were an invincible, off-white tile, and Damien started bouncing the ring off them, chasing it around as we settled into our desks. I’d cringe every time, but the ring never found its way into a heater grate, never vanished into some grimy corner recess. Each time, he retrieved it. Mostly, I marveled at the sound the ring made against the floor—it was a persistent, golden tone that hovered in the air while splitting it. Even decades after I’ve forgotten Damien’s face and voice, I can almost see that sound, can picture that particular vibration in the air.
Some memories have their own orbit, and this one’s is annual, although I’m surprised each time. I’m an English teacher now, which means I get to draw the word on a chalkboard, make sound effects, and ask my students for more examples. If education is a cycle, a circle, or a series of loops, I’ve been drawn in—someday, one of my students will teach the same lesson, double-checking the textbook to make sure they’ve spelled the word correctly. But within the loop of my thoughts, there’s the sound of Damien’s father’s wedding ring, and I’m not sure why it’s endured when so many others have faded. I suppose it’s a distinct sound I’ve never heard since. As an object, the ring itself is an easy symbol, although its meaning seems inverted in this case. What’s the opposite of commitment and infinite love? Maybe the sound remains because it’s a reminder that literature’s terms and lessons don’t always apply cleanly to real life, that every moment is ripe with chaos and entropy, a bouncing flash of gold with a boy scrambling after it.
But one beauty of literature is its density. The word “ring”—simultaneously a noun and verb, easily stretched into an adjective—offers numerous meanings. It reminds us that language captures time and space and sound while transcending each, that the universe can be shaped meaningfully on the page—and if we listen hard enough, there’s a perfect word for everything.
In the summer of 2012, Robert Yune worked as a stand-in for George Takei and has appeared as an extra in commercials and movies such as Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Fathers and Daughters, and I’m Your Woman. Yune’s fiction has been published in Green Mountains Review, The Kenyon Review, and Pleiades, among others. In 2009, he received a writing fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2015, his debut novel Eighty Days of Sunlight was nominated for the International DUBLIN Literary Award. Other nominees that year included Lauren Groff, Kazuo Ishiguro and Salman Rushdie. His debut story collection Impossible Children won the 2017 Mary McCarthy Prize and was published in October 2019 by Sarabande Books.