To See What’s Up

I’m fixing to see what’s up.

Up. I’ve been thinking about this little two letter word. It’s just used too much to be such a small word.

You just can’t do anything without using it and it starts the moment you wake up. You get up, cook up some breakfast, clean up the dishes, get yourself cleaned up, get dressed up, lock up the house, start up the car and go up the road after the weather clears up.

I can understand when it’s used to say the football team ran up the score, or that my name was up at the top of the principal’s list, but then it has so many other uses and meanings.

Like a certain topic came up at a meeting and before I could speak up everybody stood up and nobody would shut up until the police showed up and broke it up.

My friend called me up to tell me he was going to pick me up right after sun up and take me up to the golf course and run my handicap up. My children used to stir up trouble while they worked up an appetite.

They thought up excuses why they couldn’t get their grades up or their clothes up off the floor while they hit me up for money.

Upon further investigation I found the word to not only be confusing, but also contradictory. Consider something that is stopped up has to be opened up. And we open up a jar of jelly and then we also close it up.

And what’s up with the weather? When it clouds up we’re up for some rain, which wets things up, or if it doesn’t rain then things dry up.

Sometimes it has special meanings. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special. To go to town is okay, but to go up town is special.
It can even be depressing. Consider all those times you were up the creek.

This up business is just taking up too much of my time and I’m just not up to it any more. So I’ll wrap it up by saying I’m pretty mixed up about up, and I’m fixing to shut up.