Dedicated to:

Margot, Jonathan, and Sam

For teaching the value of words, silence, and friendship

I could not imagine life without you

“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.”

                        -James Earl Jones

Words Words Words

            If any of us thought that the ozone layer problems were bad, they got worse.  Then we smiled, and things got worse; we smiled again, and things got even worse.  So this is where we end up.  I tossed the newspaper down on the breakfast table and leaned back in the wooden chair. 

            “Government to Ration Spoken Word to Preserve Oxygen Supply

            Tuesday, October 30, 2009

                        As of March 29, 2009, Congress has passed the controversial legislation to institute the word ration.  The bill finally passed in both Senate and House after conference committee and…”

            Blah, blah, blah.  Idiots, all of them.  Thoroughly annoyed, I got up from the table and snatched my school bag up.  Five minutes later I got out of the teleporter and walked into school.  People just don’t understand how much the government messes with our lives; if they do they like to pretend it’s not there.  I arrived in my government class.  Soon my friends Aaron and Ari came in and took the seats around me. 

            “How was your weekend, Twyla?” Ari said.

            “Fine, I missed Ultimate Frisbee again, didn’t I?”

            “Yeah, we had an awesome game.  It sorta turned into ultimate tackle everyone, and became a free for all.”

            “Mhms, then we all hovered over to San Francisco for burgers and shakes,” Aaron injected.

            “Damn, I always miss the good weekends,” I sighed.   “Did you guys hear about the ration?”    

“Ration?  What ration?” Aaron answered in confusion. 

“Aaron, there’s a lot more happening in the world other than your need to get laid—“

“Alright everyone! It’s been ten minutes into class.  I hope you’ve done the warm up,” my teacher interrupted me.  “As some of you might have heard, words rations are going up as of tonight.  Some of you might have followed this bill, and others….lots of others….didn’t.  However, it is important, because from now on, you guys are going to be sooooo much more quiet.”

“Mr. K, like, what are we, like, supposed to do if we, like, really want to say something?”  Amanda asked. 

“Well, Amanda, you could cut down on the ‘likes.’ You guys need to figure out what you want to say if really worth saying.  Now to government…”

Five hours later, I transport home absolutely exhausted.  Mom has dinner ready, thank god.  After a scrumcious meal, I take a shower and then start studying.  Mom constantly keeps telling me that studying in her day was still out of actual textbooks, though they were a bit out of date.  We study now from HTBs (hand-held text books), they’re much more portable than real books.  All my notes are put of my palm pilot, Sir, which is pretty much my life.  If I lost Sir I would be screwed forever and ever.  Now one hundred percent bored, I turned on the news.  A pretty but plain news reporter popped up onto my screen. 

“Starting tomorrow, the word ration is to be put in place by virtual installment.  Word count will be assigned to groups depending on age, job, and location.  An overview of rations are as follows:”

A chart flashed up on the screen.

“Numbers for working adults will vary depending on the amount of speech required for the positions held….”

I turned of the news, furious.  What…the….fuck!  75% of our words were going to be cut!  That means that only 25% of what we need to say is going to be said!  This is outrageous, they’ve got to have miscalculated.  Not in the mood for homework anymore, I threw myself into bed and promptly fell asleep. 

The next morning, I got up and got ready for school.  Mom had already left for work.  Dammit, I didn’t finish my homework, I thought.  I hurried to school and made it just as the bell rang for first period.

“Morn’ Twyla,” Ari said in a disgustingly cheerful voice for 8:30 am. 

“Hi,” I drawled, “did you hear about the ration?”

“Yeah, we’d better watch what we say—“

            Mr. K started class with his usual, “Good Morning all!  Now shut up.” 

“So you might have heard about the rations.  I get 10% taken off, but that’s not going to made too much of a dent in my teaching.  You guys, on the other hand, are going to be wonderfully quiet.  I think it’s going to be extremely unnerving having a silent class, but it’ll be a change.”

“Mr. K!  I heard that someone is challenging this already in the courts on charges under the First Amendment,” Aaron proclaimed.

“Yeah, this ration is probably not going to last too long,” Mr. K said, “at least we hope so.”

In French that day, there was a lengthy debate on the death penalty.  I lead a crusade against it in the conversation, saying that the government does not have the right to claim lives.  Yes, I am opinionated.  Maggie, my best friend, played devil’s advocate and eventually it came down to the two of us going back and forth.  After class, Maggie and I went out to our lunch spot.  Liam was there and made me blush.  I’d been crushing on him for a couple of months.  Maggie lean over and whispered in my ear.

“Twyla, just tell him, you can do it!’

I shook my head, “No, I can’t.”

“Just do it!”

“Later!”

“No, now!” 

I gave her a nervous smile, and nodded.  I went up to Liam and smiled. 

“Hey, Liam”

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Fine, I just thought I should tell you—“

“What?”

Suddenly, my throat caught.  I tried to say the rest of my sentence, but it wasn’t coming.  The sounds just wouldn’t come out of my mouth.  Terrified, I looked around at Maggie.  We made eye contact and she saw something was wrong.  Maggie bounded up to Liam and me.

“Twyla!  Come get a crêpe with me!” 

We ran off together leaving Liam with a startled and confused look on his face. 

“What’s wrong, Twyla?”

I pulled a notebook out of my bag and scribbled, “It’s the word ration!  I used up all my words for today in our French debate.” 

“Jeez, they’re serious about this…”

I nodded. 

“See? I shouldn’t have listened to you!” I stuck out my tongue playfully.

“Hey!  It’s not my fault that you get tongue tied around him, word ration or not!”

We walked back to the group.

“Hey, where are your crêpes?”  Liam asked. 

Maggie and I grinned.

)   )   )   )

            Life continued on with limited words, and I never got around to telling Liam my secret.  Within a single day, I kept regretting having said something earlier when I ran out of my words.  Everyday was struggle; do I say what I really think?  Did I just say what I meant?  For two weeks straight, I talked to a minimum, but mainly just butchered my sentences so much that no one could understand me.  Salutations became nods and waves, while people hardly said good-bye anymore.  People became so serious trying to figure out their new lack of words.  During my weeks of adjustment I was isolated, even from my closest friends.

            One fine day, we were all sitting outside eating lunch.  No one was talking.  It was so fucking annoying!  Suddenly, I just had to have some sort of contact, some sort of meaningful communication.  So I poked Maggie.

            “Hey!” she giggled and good naturedly poked me back.  Ari then prodded Aaron in the ribs, who passed a jab in to stomach on to Liam.  Everyone started poking each other and ensuing poke fight escalated into a game of tackle free-for-all.  In a mass of arms, legs, and other various body parts, we all fell back down for a breather, laughed and howled with glee, glad that we could finally act normally again.  As we got up and collected our various lost items, I caught Liam’s eye and beamed at him.  He blushed slightly and gave a shy smile back.  Maggie saw this and nudged me in the arm.  I turned around to look at her and shook my head.  She subsequently started doing the chicken dance and I hit her gently on the arm, making her roll her eyes in return. 

            So this is how life became.  We counted our words.  Life was all about words.  English class and French class became much less animated, no one really wanted to discuss and argue much in case those words were needed later.  School in general became much calmer, however I ran out of words for questions a lot of the time.  My  math grade dropped a full letter  because I kept hitting my limit before I even got to the class.  It was infuriating.  I guarded my words and counted them so carefully, and I still did not have enough.  Still, we all got by.  I followed the court case against the ration in the newspapers.  They sure were being slow about the whole thing.  It had been at least four months ago that it had been brought to court.  Damn bureaucracy and indecisive politicians. 

            A certain Saturday, or maybe it was a Sunday, I was sitting at home, reading The Raven.   It seemed rather unfair that a Raven got to talk when we could hardly utter a word not without wondering whether it was worth doing so.  A knock at the door jolted me from Poe’s gothic world.  I got up and opened the door to find a rather disheveled man standing on the stoop.  I furrowed my brow and tilted my head slightly, giving him inquisitive look.  He pointed to a sign he had written in Sharpie® on paper. 

     “Hi, my name is Bill.  I lost my job a few years back, and I am trying to support my three children. Would you be interesting in buying some word rations from me?”

     Shocked, I stood there for a moment.  The fact that he was writing on paper indicated that he was not kidding, at least about being poor.  I gestured for him to stay, and ran upstairs to get my palm pilot and some money.  I got back and started typing into to the hand held.

     “Hi, Bill.  I’m sorry about your situation but why are you selling your words?”

     “Because I don’t need them for my job,” he wrote.

     “Can’t your wife help make money?”

     “My wife died from suffocating because there’s isn’t much oxygen in our neighborhood.”

     “Oh…I’m so sorry.  So how does this transfer thing work?”

     “I transfer from my account until I don’t have anymore words.  I would have to steal words from other people’s accounts once mine ran out.”

     “If you can do such a complex hack into the system, why can’t you take words from the government?  I’d just steal from the government officials if it were up to me, they have the most words, and they get replaced almost immediately.”

     “You sure know your facts.  In fact, all the government officials and anyone affiliated with them are getting special word privileges.  From what I know, they get 98% of their word count.  They are making it harder for new government officials to come in because the new officials do not get the same amount of words.  I can change that.  I can take their words and transfer them to the people, I’m just waiting for the right moment.  This is an infringement on our right to free speech and something must be done about it.” 

     “Then what are you waiting for?”

     “I’m waiting for a time when taking away the government’s words will make a huge impact.”

            “I see…you’re like a modern-day Robin Hood.  That’s impressive.  Well, for now, take this money to help you get back on your feet.  Good luck, Bill.”

            With that, I handed him a fifty dollars, smiled and shut the door. 

)   )   )   )

            The next day at school, everything was the same as usual.  However, when I got to math class, I realized I still had words for questions.  Surprised, I continued asking questions till I understood my assignment.  It was a miracle.  Then I remembered the day before.  Bill had managed to transfer the words.  I couldn’t remember the last time I could say so much without worrying.  I was beside myself, but eventually calmed back down.  The rest of the day, I just talked when I wanted to.  It was the most wonderful feeling.  I was  so happy that I did not have to worry. 

            A month later, I ran out of my extra words and had to re-learn how to conserve words again.  I kicked myself so many times.  Why hadn’t I had just conserved my extra words?  In truth the problem with my new store of words was that everyone else was still conserving, so they were not really worth that much.  I grade went back up in math however, which was definitely a plus.  And despite my extra amount of words, I still hadn’t asked Liam out.  I snuck glances at him in classes, and convinced myself that it was hopeless. 

            Every morning I watched the news about the word ration and anything regarding it.  The court case finally reached the Supreme Court, but nothing had been decided yet.  Sometime after my encounter with Bill, I was watching the news and the headline flashed up on the screen:

            “Senate Filibuster Failed Due to Loss of Government Words

                         Thursday, April 15, 2010.

                                    The recent homeland security bill was being filibustered on the Senate floor by Senators John Linden (D-NJ), Frank Capps (D-AZ), Ryan Fine (D-IL), and Melissa Weiss (D-OR).  The filibuster was interrupted during a literal complete loss of words.  Subsequently, the filibuster was ended and voted on.  The bill passed 61 yea and 39 nay.  Government officials are still at a loss as to the cause of the failure of the word system and are still searching for a cause….”

            Nearly in tears from laughing, I headed to school.  In government there was something resembling a discussion about the filibuster that went awry.  I even participated some ideas, not mentioning that I probably knew the person who caused it. 

            The next day the headlines read:

            “Supreme Court Declares Word Ration Unconstitutional

                        Friday, April 16, 2010

                        In light of recent events, the Supreme Court has declared the Word Ration unconstitutional under the First Amendment.  Substantial evidence has also proven the Ration extremely disruptive to the American people, and its government including disruption of psychological development in young children, and expansive black market that illegally transferred word rations….”

            Not surprising.  Aaron, had after all, predicted this in Mr. K’s class seven months ago.  Suddenly, we had all our words back.  Wonderful words, but no one knew how to use them anymore.  Except for one person.

            April 19, 2010, I went out to the usual lunch spot.  Liam was there and came up to me. 

            “Hey, Twyla.”

            I smiled back, still unaccustomed to speaking freely.

            “I’ve been meaning to say this to you for a long time, but…would like to go to see the new James Bond movie Friday?” he said.

            “I would love to.  How did you know?”

            “I guessed by the way you looked at me sideways when you turned your head and rested it slightly on your arms, and the slight shrug of your shoulders when you talked to me.”

“Well, they say, ‘One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.’  But apparently, some things are worth more than words,” I said, taking his hand and leading him towards our friends.