"Like" has virtually replaced "um" as a verbal crutch, at least in the U.S. and in mostly PG situations. Everything is "like," everybody is "all like," she "was like," he "was like." And I'm "all like" and it "was so like." But what if it weren't just a crutch, what if when we all said it, we really meant it? What if everything and everyone was really only "like" something, only approximating it, the shade of a coachman brushing the shade of a coach etc? It would be like a matrix of similes, our lives would be completely allegorical. Everything would resemble something, stand for something, but not actually be something. Like, for real.