The stock market was down. Gas prices were up. Home values were down. Inflation was up. Savings were down. Unemployment was up. Production was down. Foreclosures were up. The people were down. Way down. Something had to be done.
Something had been done. Many somethings. Most of them involved printing green paper and giving it away. For some reason, this didn’t work. No one seemed to know why, but it didn’t. More green paper was supposed to make the things people wanted to go up, go up, and the things people wanted to go down, go down. But it didn’t.
Worse still, new things started going up that people wanted to go down, and vice versa. Crime had been going down for a long time, but was now up. Life expectancy had been going up for a long time, but was now down. The people were down, way down, and so were their politicians’ approval numbers. Something had to be done. And something was. A brilliant something, maybe the most brilliant ever to come out of Washington, which is saying something indeed, for many brilliant somethings had come out of Washington before. But never a something like this.
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The problem, at its core, was that what people wanted to go up, was going down, and what people wanted to go down, was going up. The solution, at its core, was to make what was going up, go down, and what was going down, go up. It was obvious. An executive order was issued and executed; a new congressional committee convened.
Thus began the first session of the newly formed Linguislature, which, in its first linguislative act, ordered that henceforth up was down. The president signed it immediately, and it was the law of the land, a breathtaking piece of linguislation.
Up was down.
Some people didn’t like it, but the law was the law. The nation was in a bad way and everyone had to rally behind this new plan. Politicians called on citizens to be patriotic. Saying that something was up when it was down was not only illegal but also un-American.
Up was down.
Unfortunately, down was not yet up.
The companion piece of linguislation that would change down into up was prevented from going forward (one could no longer say “held up” without meaning “held down,” but “held down” did not yet mean “held up”) by a committee member who insisted that funding for a highway rest stop in his home state be added to the bill. The wrangling went on for three days, as other committee members argued that their states also needed highway rest stops. In the end, it was agreed that all of their states needed highway rest stops, and down was linguislated to be up.
It had been a rough three days for Americans. When up is down, and down is down, that’s one too many downs, and one too few ups. During those stressful days, if a woman, tired after a long day of work, had enough of watching television and wanted to leave the couch to go to the bedroom, she could not say to her husband, “I’m going upstairs to bed.” Not without breaking the law. And she could not very well say, “I’m going downstairs to bed,” since down did not yet mean up. She could simply say she was going to bed and leave up or down out of it altogether, but that would be rude. The only polite option was to stay on the couch late into the night while her husband watched reruns of The A-Team. Unless, of course, the bedroom was in fact downstairs. If the bedroom was downstairs, she could just say she was going down to bed. But as luck would have it, the bedroom rarely was.
Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed in the Linguislature, and seven states started planning construction on highway rest stops, named after dedicated and selfless public servants, on the same day that down officially became up. This made life better for everyone. Now people didn’t have to sit on the couch watching reruns of The A-Team unless they wanted to. That’s not to say the transition was easy. It wasn’t.
