The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 2000. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

Once upon a time there existed a language. It was a good language and a popular language and millions of people all over the world chose to use it to communicate their thoughts to millions of other people. The reason so many people liked this particular language was that it was very democratic. Why, anyone who wanted to could add a word to it, and the more other people used the word the more it became a standard part of that language's lexicon. It wasn't like its Latin grandfather, who was so stuffy it never let new words get added. No, this was a language for the people and by the people. This was a language for everyone.

The world which used this language was of course filled with both good people and bad people, and both groups would add their own new words on a regular basis. The language couldn't be more pleased. It didn't know what words meant, but only that new ones were being invented, keeping it alive and healthy and growing, just like it should. And the good people would listen to these additions, words like "television" and "radar" and "funkadelic" and they would scratch their heads in confusion and awe and wonder about this modern world in which they lived.

The bad people's words were no bigger and no smaller than anyone else's. They used the same standard combinations of 26 guttural noises that any other word used. But the purpose of these words was very different. These words were used to spread hate and fear and suspicion. These words were used to hurt others during the times that the bad people couldn't actually pick up a stick and hurt the good people physically. The bad people attached such vile, disgusting visual images of violence and hatred to these words, in fact, that eventually all one had to do was hear the word itself to feel hurt and offended.

One day a group of people who all lived in a big ivory tower decided that they were sick of bad people having this much control. "How dare they?" this group said to each other over a round of double cappuccinos. "Why, those bad people have no right whatsoever to hurt us this way!" And the people in the tower made a new law and spread it out over the land. "FROM THIS DAY FORWARD," the law declared, "NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO USE THE FOLLOWING WORDS EVER AGAIN! UTTERANCE OF THESE WORDS FOR ANY REASON WILL BE GROUNDS FOR PUNISHMENT!"

The language was sad. It knew that the banning of words was in fact a step backwards. It knew that the attempt of the tower people to shrink the language was just as futile as telling a child to stop growing. No, the only effective way to curb a language is to kill the language, and it knew that the tower people's actions was the first step along that long road.

Confusion spread across the land. One person asked, "What if I say one of these words but not in the same way as the bad people mean it?" And the tower people said, "No! You can't use the word at all!" And another person said, "But I'm old! When I was a child this word meant something good! It's only now that it means something bad!" And the tower people said, "That's too bad, grandpa! We don't care WHY you're saying it! You just can't say it!" And then a third person spoke up and said, "That's all fine and good, but let's say I want to report that I heard a bad person use one of the words. How do I do that?" And the tower people thought about it and they said, "Just use the first letter of the bad word! That way everyone is happy!" And soon the world was full of reports about bad people using the n-word and the f-word and the q-word and the c-word and every other letter of the alphabet.

The language got even sadder. It knew that it wasn't the words themselves that made them bad but the context in which they were used. It knew that banning the bad people's words just made the power of that bad word grow. And it wasn't just the language that knew this. One year a group of very attractive young men who wore black t-shirts and pink triangles and who had sex with OTHER very attractive young men decided that it had had just about enough of the tower people. These men chose one of the bad words -- the q-word, as a matter of fact -- and they started using it everywhere. They put the q-word on their t-shirts and the back bumpers of their cars. They had the q-word tattooed into their flesh and would stand outside buildings in large groups, yelling, "We're here! We're q-word! And we won't go away!"

And soon the q-word lost most of the power it had originally had. The bad people would try to hurt the attractive young men and they would shout, "YOU'RE A Q-WORD!" But the attractive young men would just smile and say, "Yes, I know. Thank you!" And the attractive young men tried to show this to the tower people, to prove there were better ways of dealing with bad words than simply banning them. But the tower people said, "SHUT UP! We don't have to listen to you! If you had anything valid to say, you'd be in the ivory tower with us! And you're not in the ivory tower, WE are! So go away!"

The problem with the tower people was that they underestimated the intelligence of the bad people. The bad people knew they'd be punished for using the banned words, so instead they started using other words, words the good people had originally invented. The bad people made their own list with words like "spear" and "chuck" and "wet" and "back" and "slant" and "eyes" and "panty" and "waist," perfectly reasonable words that were completely innocent when used by the good people but something else altogether when used by the bad people.

The favorite of the bad people's new words was "boy." The word had been in the language for thousands of years and usually meant "small male child" when said 99 percent of the time. But the bad people would say it with a hateful drawl, sneering their lips and squinting their eyes, and soon everyone knew just exactly what the bad people meant when they said the word "boy." But it was a perfect plan! After all, you can't ban a word so integral to the language as "boy," could you?

But that's exactly what the tower people did, and soon doctors all across the land were heard saying, "Congratulations, Mr. Smith. You're the proud father of a b-word. A big, bouncing baby b-word!" But the bad people would just pick other words, and then the tower people would just ban other words. And soon every single word of the language had been banned, and you would stand on a streetcorner and hear two people talking, and one would say, "H-word y-word s-word m-word s-word?" And the other one would say, "W-word?" And the first one would say again, "H-word y-word s-word m-word s-word?" And soon the language choked on its own tongue and died an ignoble death, and the people across the land fell into a chaos which eventually destroyed the entire civilization. Because the people had learned...way too late...that it had never been the bad people who had threatened their civilization. It had been good people, who did bad things, and lived in ivory towers.