by Kane X. Faucher

Little Enclitic was curled up before grandfather Proclitic for about an hour before his youthful rambunctious nature caused him to erupt with a question that would solicit grandfather's story-telling function.

"Grampa, they teach us in the schools the importance of aslike, and that there was a war, but I do not understand much about it."

Proclitic let a smile of remembrance grace his face, rubbed his sore old knees, and began his tale...

When I was just a young boy, nary a year or so older than you are now, we had by then lived on this island for nearly forty years without incident. You see, we came by this island by accident. My parents had just graduated high school, and they, along with their graduating class, were celebrating this milestone by taking a tropical cruise. Unfortunately, a great tempest arose, and tossed the ship off course. The ship came under the power and command of the winds and the tide, listing helplessly for days on end until it beached on an uninhabited island--our island.

Admittedly, none of them were very bright or well read. The first settlers did their best to adapt to their new home by relying on their vivid memories of television, popular music, and movies. Life was hard, and many of them perished, mostly by putting the wrong natural florae into their mouths, or in failing to possess skills in hunting and fishing. As well, none of them were gifted in building dwellings, and so hurricanes swept a portion of them to their deaths. It took much experimentation--and much avoidable death--before the first settlers devised a method for purifying the local waters to be safe enough to drink. And still others died of boredom and listlessness, being marooned on an island without the entertainment amenities they hitherto were used to.

Once a basic village was constructed, the survivors debated on what to call their newfound island, never expecting to see civilization ever again, and so deciding to create their own. They debated for days, searching vainly with their limited vocabularies for some descriptive term that could be transformed into a suitable name for the island. As it is written in the earliest records of our history:

"We should, like, call this--like--island, like something like, you know!"

"Yeah, like, whatever! Like let's pick a name. We're like getting bored, you know!"

This went on for about a week until out of resignation and boredom they decided on a name for the island, which was 'Like'. The official language of Like was "like, you know, like."

We lived peaceably here for nearly forty years until that fateful day when unsuspected visitors set upon us.

I remember seeing something streaking in the sky, and it was on fire. My mother told me it was called, like, an airplane, and that this belonged to that other world they came from. There was quite a stir as we all watched the plane crash into the sea. About half an hour later, a large group of people washed up unto the shore--veritably, the only other people to ever visit this island since our settlers. They were all wearing disheveled suits, ties, and other fancy apparel. Many of them were blind in having lost their eyeglasses in the sea. Some of them grieved over their lost books. They informed us that they were a group of scholars who had chartered a special flight to attend a conference of some sort--I do not remember. We immediately welcomed them into our collective, but it would not be too long before problems arose.

For starters, the new arrivals seemed absolutely repulsed by our manner of speech. And when we told them the name that we had selected for the island, they scoffed at us in disgust, claiming all manner of things about a lack of education, the deterioration of language, and other such offensive things. The new arrivals spoke a language that was very strange to us, and many of the original settlers immediately felt averse to them, claiming that these people were, "like, my teachers or my parents or some junk...they think they like know it all, and like treat us like were like dumb or something." A rift had very quickly formed between our two groups, and it was not long before the new settlers decided to make a village of their own on the other side of the island, completely snubbing us.

One of our settlers was out walking around, looking for shiny stuff in the sand, when he accidentally overheard two of the new settlers speaking. He hid behind a tree and listened in:

"They obviously represent a want of education."

"Indeed they do, Mortimer. It is positively ghastly what tortures they enact upon language! We have to ensure that we do not allow our disconnection from civilization to become a cause of the erosion of our intellects. Imagine! These ignorant buffoons employing vacuous similes! They lack the cerebral power to even complete one simile, let alone have the ability to construct a decent metaphor."

"Perhaps we should show more compassion. I say we make it our pedagogical goal to force them to be in the presence of metaphor."

Of course, our eavesdropper reported this conversation to our village--at least the best he could given the complexity of the language--and fear spread. What was this metaphor these strangers spoke of? Was it some sort of weapon? A trained beast that would take away our young in the night? We thenceforth lived under the oppressive fear of this mysterious thing called metaphor , and we conspired in secret whispers about how we may defend ourselves against it--whatever it was. Fear took the better hold of our judgement, and whatever relations remained between our respective villages became strained and fraught with mistrust.

The strangers initiated their first combative gesture by unilaterally declaring the island's new name as 'As'. And so began the great war of the tongues, the war of As and Like.

The first battle was fought at the one river that serviced the entire island. The verbal exchange is still inscribed in our history books:

"Like, what's your problem? Like, you think you're like, like, better or like something like that."

"As, what is your fundamental issue? As, you think you're as, as, somehow superior as all that."

"Like, whatever!"

"As, as it is!"

This quickly came to blows, and many cruel months progressed where on each side were examples of sabotage and violence. So acute is my memory of seeing the two sides clash, coming over their hills yelling "Like!" on one side and "As!" on the other.

One day, reason and peace returned to the island. With both sides exhausted with the effort of combat, and noting that our resources were being squandered in a pointless war, both sides agreed to meet and draft a treaty. It was then decided, through compromise, that our empty similes and metaphors may coexist as one, for, as it is said by our Resident Elder Linguist, there is no logical or semantic difference between a simile and metaphor since both ask us to abstractly link two nouns in a conceptual relationship. The only difference is a mere word, a convention of speech. But to say that the sea is like a dream or that the sea is as a dream amounts to the same mental response, since neither suggests that the sea is literally a dream.

From that point on, we decided to name the island 'Aslike' for the first six months of the year, and 'Likeas' for the remainder. And, to avoid future flare-ups from prejudicial usage, it was unanimously decided that we would abandon the convention of using 'as' or 'like' in a sentence, but rather use either 'aslike' or 'likeas', which we now use today interchangeably.

"But, grampa," asked Enclitic, "instead of using both of these words, why not settle on a new word that has no resemblance to either of the two?"

"That," said Proclitic with an indulgent smile, "would be aslike something stupid."

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