All day the eastern line storm punished the sea with winds so violent, it lifted its waters into the sky in a chaotic froth, something seldom seen. Now as dusk arrives, the storm has come upon the shore and an old wooden house anchored to the ground at the top of the cliff high above the roiling sea. The old house trembles as the wind leans heavily into it with a pelt of rain. Airborne water finds its way between the laps of the weatherboards and into the pockets and fractures within the walls. Great gusts of atmosphere are thrust down upon the old house and soon reach the timbers within the walls and the wrought iron nails which have held the house fast all these years. The timbers began to move and the nails which held them twisted in their wooden beds as the house, in fierce defiance, desperately stood before the ferocious attack. These old spikes, solid for all these years, have bound themselves in place with an effluence of rust that has penetrated the voids between the wood to become one unit, timber and its connector. They now creaked and moaned with unwanted movements.

    Despite the malevolent rage outside the old house, it was bedtime inside.

Father and son, with calm indifference to the storm, creaked up the stairs to the children’s room. What bedtime story was to be told on this scary night that may distract the attention away from the violence out there? Dad pondered. They crossed the unsettled floorboards to the boy’s bunks and the father’s bedside chair.

“Let’s have a story about words tonight,” father said, as he settled into the little chair.

“I don’t know what you mean. Is it scary?” said the son.

“No, not really. But it can be interesting.”

“OK, go ahead. Tell it.”

“Fine! I will.”

“Once upon a time, a long time ago, there were two people sitting together in a big, open field next to a forest. One of the people was doing something with a rock, the other was watching. With the rock in one hand and a fresh animal bone in the other, this person was trying to show her companion that help was needed. A hand was needed to hold the bone against the hard ground so it could be smashed for its edible meat inside. But it wasn’t working, the understanding of the need, the holding of the bone, wasn’t coming across.”

“OK,” said the boy, “why didn’t this person just say, ‘look, I need help here?’”

“Well, that’s the whole nugget of these stories I am about to tell. You see, they didn’t have speech. This was a long time ago, and language had not yet been invented. They could not tell each other what they were thinking. As a matter of fact, maybe they could not even think what it was that was needed - an additional hand to be used to hold, because a word, hand, for that thing, living at the end of the arm had no name. Even the act of holding was probably difficult to picture without a bunch of words to tell the other, this is the way it works.”

“So, that is the introduction,” said the father, “and this is what I am going to do: I am going to tell you three similar stories, but each story will be with a different set of circumstances.”

“What do you mean ‘circumstances’, I don’t know what you mean, what circumstance means?”

“That’s my point! How can I talk to you if you don’t know my words? But hold on to that for a moment. You will see when I tell the stories.”

“OK. Go ahead. Tell it.”

“Good, here we go. Story Number One.”

“Once upon a time, there were a bunch of people living together in a big forest a long time ago. Long before there were houses, cities, schools and cars. This forest was a great place for these people to live because it was filled with lots of interesting and useful plants and stuff. Things like great, tall trees with long vines hanging from high limbs, many delicious berries, great ferns with leafy fonds that could make the best covering to keep the rain out. There was so much material at-hand to use for making things in this wonderful forest. It was a perfect place for them.”

“But, the trouble was that these people had no speech. They could only look at each other, make a smiling face, or maybe a mean face and grunt and gurgle. They could not talk to each other. They could not communicate.”

“What’s communicating?”

“That’s just what we are doing right now. We are communicating with a language that both of us understand. When I say ‘bicycle’, your mind makes a picture of the very thing I am thinking about. My words travel through the air, go into your ears, and into your brain, and your brain says to itself, ‘righto, go it’. Then it tells your voice to make the sounds that communicate your answer, and it is those sounds that I would understand. Right?”

“Gurgle, gurgle. Just kidding. Sorry, go ahead.”

“So the only thing they could do is point and shake their arms trying to ‘tell’ the other something. They often ended up angry and sad because almost everything had to have all this go on to get across a simple thought. Most of the time, they gave up trying to communicate, and di the job by themselves, alone without help. Quite clearly this wasn’t working. So, as you might guess, there were many possible projects that could only be done by many people, working together, and passing information forward to the other people in the group.

“Sometimes a tribal member would get irritated at another and grunt, gurgle, and babble at the others out of frustration. The others just looked dumbly back. Probably it was these funny sounds that came out of people’s throats that were gradually turned into meaningful ‘words’. ‘Grrugh’ might mean ‘sure’. By the way, ‘dumb’ means you can’t speak.

“Anyway, this group was a lost cause, and an awful mess. This terrible lack of being able to pass ideas from one person, from one brain to another, drove this group into endless frustration. They were always unhappy. Sadly, these unhappy people remained undernourished, without adequate shelter and mostly miserable.”

End of Story

“OK, I got it. What’s number two?”

“All right, here’s number two.”

“Once upon a time, there was a bunch of people living together in a big forest a long time ago. This forest was a great place to live because it was filled with lots of interesting and useful things. Things like tall trees with long, long vines hanging from high limbs, many delicious berries, great ferns with leafy fonds that could make perfect covering to keep the rain out and much more…”

“Hey, that’s the same story!”

“No it ain’t.”
“Hey, ‘ain’t’ isn’t a real word. It’s not a proper word - I know that!”

“ You’re absolutely right!! But I squeezed it in to see if you were listening. But now, the story changes, so keep on listening.”

“The difference was that these people had a fine-tuned nuanced language, developed over many centuries of trial and error, additions, modifications and deletions. It probably all started with grunts.”

“What’s ‘nuance’ mean?”

“It means that their language had many ways that it could express things, like when your mother says 'No’, but really means ‘no-ish’.”

“Yeah, I get it. Finish the story.”

“With the great forest stretching out on all sides, this crew worked out their needs well. As an example, they needed a way to get out into the river in order to catch the big fish. They needed a watercraft of some sort. Since they had never seen a boat before, they had to work out what a boat might be. That took a lot of figuring and talking. They talked and asked questions and finally came up with an idea. To carry out this idea, they had to chop down a large tree. With their stone axes, it took many people many days to get it down. Crash! It went as it came onto the forest floor. Then it took many more days to hollow out the inside of the trunk and work the bow into a point with fire and axes. When they were finally finished, there lay before them an immense log canoe that could hold thirty people. Yes, and it took thirty people just to get it to the riverbank, but it served them well, and they caught many fish. This community of humans lived well.”

End of Story

“So,” Dad asked, “what was the thing that made it possible, what was the difference between the two groups?”

As the boy gathered his thoughts, the house gave a silent shudder. He looked out the window into the dark sky, now turning purple, streaked with yellow.

“They helped each other.”

“How were they able to help each other?”

“Because they could talk about it.”

“Absolutely correct!”

At that very moment, another shudder ran through the structure of the whole house. The two looked up at the roof, which throbbed from the awful pressures of the growling wind. The great nails moaned and screeched as they twisted in their sockets, yet their hold remained fast. The house shook violently but stood.

“Now I am going to tell you the third story. Ready?”

“Sure.”

“Once upon a time, there were a bunch of people living together in a big forest a long time ago. This forest was a great place to live because it was filled with lots of interesting and useful things. Things like great tall trees with long, long vines hanging from high limbs, many delicious berries, great ferns with leafy fonds that a could make perfect covering to keep the rain out and much more.”

“Hold on. Here we go again. Do we have to use the same old story over and over?”

“I am making a point. Just go with it, and please stop interrupting me.”

“Sorry.”

“Now this colony of early humans has perfected a language of great subtlety and nuance.”

“Hold please, I know about ‘nuance’, but what is this ‘subtlety’ please.”

“Yes, you have every right to ask this question. Subtlety implies complexity and restraint. Not banging you over the head with it but expressing it delicately. When your mother says to you, ‘I think you might want to bring in your jacket before this storm hits, it’s usually warmer when it is dry.’ Didn’t she say this just this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Well, your mother can be very subtle at times.”

“OK, understood. Please go on…and I did bring it in. Now you know, with these words for your personal information.”

“Well said! Now I’ll start again.”

“Now, this colony of early humans had perfected a language of great subtlety and nuance. This carefully conceived and maintained language was the pride of these people. It was used with care and honor. They were able to tell each other important, complicated ideas, and so they maintained superior society. They probably were smarter because they had such a great language which helped them think things out clearly. Their minds were running like a well-oiled machine.

“But something began to happen. Some people got the idea to use these words to tell what was not so. They would say, ‘That log there is full of bugs that can kill you with their bite.’, when there were really no bugs in the log at all. Or they would jump in front of everybody and scream, ‘There are people here sitting next to you who eat children for dinner,’ or they might say, ‘I know someone’s mother who is not a real person at all but is just pretending to be human and is really a wolf.’ Well, most of the tribe just laughed at them because they saw that what they said was a crazy and nutty thing.

“But a problem developed because some of the tribe started taking these untruths seriously. Some tribal members listened very carefully to these people and completely believed everything they heard, even though there was nothing there to believe.”

“Why did some of the people believe them while the rest saw they were just fibs, I don’t understand. But mostly, I don’t understand why these people would go to the trouble to make up these fibs in the first place? They must have had a reason.”

“Well, it could be that they liked the attention they got. They liked all the tribes looking at them. It could be as simple as that, or it could be for other reasons. But let’s finish the story, then we’ll discuss it. OK?”

“OK.”

“It wasn’t long before the people who believe the fibs began to form little groups on their own, apart from, but within the tribe. And as you might guess, there were arguments between the two groups. The original members challenged the others, and the new group refused to be questioned and split off from the rest to form their own tribe at a different place in the forest. It wasn’t long before there was chaos and great anger. Important projects that required full participation were abandoned. So much energy was taken up in fighting that the better things of their lives were unattended and were forgotten. It was not so very long before the whole of the society began to crumble away. Projects that used to be straightforward and simple became complex and often just didn’t work at all because they were misdirected with false information.

“Believe it or not, this society soon just fell apart. There is little known of it today. Some say that it fixed its problems, and the tribe was able to come back together, but I’m not so sure. I don’t know what came about.”

End of Story

“So Dad, why did you tell these screwy fibs in the first place, and why did so many people believe what they said? It doesn’t make sense. Your stories are good, but to tell the truth, the end is not so good. I can’t understand why anyone would seriously say those things and other people would go with it.”

“Well, sorry, I’ll do my best to try to give you a reason or two. What we are talking about here, the meaning of this bedtime story for you tonight is just how vital are the words that bind a society together, giving the tribe the ability to exchange ideas and thoughts. Words must be honored, they are the ties that hold us together, and that’s where our strength comes from.”

At that moment, an overwhelming blast of wind hit the house full-on. It shook the walls so violently, a water glass fell off the table, and the full-length mirror in the hall fell from its nail with a great crash of glass. The two held tight to each other, as another strike hit the weather side, and Momma came running up the stairs, two at a time. All three sat at the edge of the bed, holding arm in arm and looking up at the roof.

“My great-grandfather knew the smithy, that’s what they used to call the blacksmith, who forged the nails that hold this house together,” Mama said. “It took him the better part of a year to heat the metal to red hot and pound them, hundreds of them long and pointed with the marks of the forge on their shafts. These wrought nails pierce the timbers, with their blunted joint, without causing the wood to split, which would have weakened the clench. The nail’s task, which they do so well, is to hold this structure, this house together - wood to wood…”

Between blasts of wind, the old house stood in silence, as it had for an impressive span of generations. Of all the assaults, the one could be the worst. The ancient nails deep within the timbers screamed out in dissent as the raging storm sought to wrenched them from their partnership with the wood and to pull them from their hold. Many years ago, they had been pounded into places where they now stood, with a binding obligation to make this structure of high rank. Without them, this house would be no more than a stack of lumber…

The three people knew that if the house were to give-way, there was nowhere that would be safe, especially in the open, for outside they would be quickly blown away. Holding fast with the old house was their only recourse. However, they had a strong confidence that those well-fashioned nails would make it through, and the house would stay together.

The boy stood and walked to the wall, placing his ear to an exposed timber. “Yea, Dad, I can hear it working right now, and it’s crying out, but it’s holding, and I think I can even understand what it’s saying.”