One Word

A Story by inkwellgirl

In the land of Lexeme, conversations have become so time consuming, President Colloquy has decided to install a 5 character per word limit come Winter.

Feet pounding, I tore into the kitchen. “Grandma, Grandma!” I shouted, waving a battered newspaper in the air, “Look at this!”

Dressed in her favorite floral print, Grandma stood in the middle of her kitchen, mug of tea in hand. She frowned disapprovingly at me through the steam billowing from the cup. “Don’t screech, Simile. I’m right here.”

I bounded onto my favorite stool and handed her the newspaper. “Take a look at them apples,” I said triumphantly.

Grandma held the newspaper in her withered hands and read it out loud. “President Colloquy to place character limit on words to decrease communication time…”

She looked up at me from the newspaper and set her tea down on the wooden counter. “Simile,” she said with a disapproving look, “this is complete rubbish. This story is published in a newspaper for cripes sake.”

Grandma shook her head at me. “But, Grandma,” I whined, “It’s true. We don’t need all those long words for texting and IM’ing and stuff, so the President is getting rid of ‘em. He says no one’ll read the dictionary with all those icky, long words in there.”

Clucking her tongue, Grandma shuffled to the living room and sat down on her worn paisley couch. With a wave of her hand, she gestured for me to come sit next to her. “We live in the country of Lexeme. Words are our life, sweetie. Besides, what would we do with all that?”

Grandma waved a hand at her giant bookcase. That bookcase of mammoth proportions was her pride and joy. Towering above the rest of her furniture, the deep mahogany wood exuded an air of royalty that contrasted with the kitschy feel of her faded, dandelion yellow living room. She had filled it with all shapes and sizes of books written by people with long, complicated names. Whenever Grandma had guests over, she liked to say something fancy sounding and add “Shakespeare said that” at the end. I used to worry who this “Shakespeare” guy was, and why he talked so funny. I had no idea who he was. His name was well over six characters, after all. No one texted about him.

I shrugged. “They’re rewriting them or somethin’. No one reads dusty ol’ books anyways. We’re all much too busy to read anything.”

Grandma snorted, almost spilling her tea. “Busy doing what?” she asked, “Texting? Lazing around? Partying?”

She stood up and walked to the bookcase. On her tiptoes, Grandma pulled a book off the shelf. “Maybe you should try reading a little, sweetie. Then you would realize people don’t actually read a dictionary.”

Smiling, Grandma placed Austin’s Pride and Prejudice in my lap. “You have about three months to read that book before they take it off the shelves. The word prejudice is more than six characters after all.”

With that, she pushed me out her white washed door and on to the street. I looked down at the tattered book in my hand. Its plum colored cover was ripped in one corner, coffee stained on another. With crackling and rustling, I thumbed through the novel. That’s way more than a hundred forty words, Grandma. When will I read that?

July rolled into August and August into September with nary a word from Grandma about the new law. President Colloquy was scheduled to sail into Diction, the capital of Lexeme, and my home, mid-October. School had started, and I was busy at work with my Twitter textbooks. Pride and Prejudice sat on my dresser.

Finally, it was the day before President Colloquy, or rather Prez Dialog, as we would all be calling him tomorrow, would arrive. “Well, Grandma?” I asked, “Whatcha gonna do?”

We were sitting on that same paisley couch, a strangely déjà vu experience. About a week ago, the government had issued a recall of all books. Grandma’s were still sitting on her beloved bookcase. For that matter, Pride and Prejudice was still sitting on my dresser. A month or two ago, I had offered to return it, but Grandma refused to take it back. Grandma just wrapped her wrinkled hands around her mug of tea. “Wait and see,” she said with a smile.

Mid-summer, President Colloquy issued a law limiting all words to five characters or less, and promised us, the good people of Diction, the capital of Lexeme, that he would sail in to legalize that law. In late autumn of that year, the ship arrived. My grandmother, holding a sign with a single word written on it, stood at the dock waiting. Actually, we all stood at the dock waiting. It was a national holiday. All of us waited there, exhaling puffs of steamy breath, rubbing our chapped hands. Grandma waited there, too, with a furled up sign.

Finally, the President stepped off the ship. Sharply dressed in a pinstripe suit, he waved at us, looking dapper and professional. The crowd cheered and Grandma unrolled her sign, hoisting it into the air. The crowd fell silent. The President looked ill and swayed uncertainly in shock. Across Grandma’s sign was one grand word, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.

“What-- What is that?” spluttered President Colloquy.

Grandma just stood there. A long silence filled the dock. I took one deep breath. “Prejudice!” I shouted.

It echoed across the lake. “Preposterous!” I added, the one other word I remembered from Pride and Prejudice.

I swung my hand in the air and pointed one finger at President Colloquy. “That’s my badass grandma. Badass, six letters, people. Count ‘em.”

The crowd cheered. Grandma smiled.