The Woman Who Wasn’t Afraid of Punctuation

 

I’ve always wanted to date a French woman. The accent…

I can just stop there, right?

 

Well, today was my lucky day.

Her hair was thick and wavy, and black, like fertile soil.

With big, blue eyes and the long, elegant fingers of a pianist, or perhaps a cello player.

It was a little awkward at first (as first dates usually are). Our conversation meandered until we found common ground in the most unlikely of places:

punctuation.

After we got our drinks and sat back down–OJ for the mademoiselle, Mocha for moi– I told her that I really liked her texts.  

She perked up in her chair a bit and smiled, interested in what was to follow.

I like that you use exclamation points when you write to me, I said.

During our textual courtship, she used exclamation points quite liberally. Being a wordsmith, I pay attention to such things.

After all, it takes real courage to show interest when communicating to someone in a dating situation.

We’ve all been there. You’re writing a text to someone you may potentially be interested in, and you come to a literary and philosophical cross-roads: do I end this message with a period or an exclamation point?

You’re excited, and your natural inclination is to use an exclamation point, but will it come off as too much? too strong? too interested? So, you consider going back to the default–using a period.

But the period just sounds too… blah. It makes it seem like you’re hardly interested at all! You wonder: do I play it safe or roll the dice and show some passion? 

So, when I meet a woman who isn’t afraid to use punctuation to express herself, my heart flutters a bit:

As we laughed about the struggle, we agreed that humanity needs a new punctuation symbol so we can properly express ourselves without fear of being misunderstood: the short exclamation point!

It would be half as tall as a regular exclamation point, and allow us to show excitement without the threat of going overboard.

In the meantime (as we work on our patent), what if we all took a few more risks with our punctuation–and in our lives–to show how we really feel?

 

Because fortune favors the bold.

 

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