A Semicolon and End Parenthesis Point to Disaster

When I walked onto an empty Grosvenor train this morning at Silver Spring, I took my usual seat at the end of the car and made myself comfortable.  I looked up to see IP heading towards me, but he was beaten to the seat next to me by an old man.  Looking a bit crestfallen, he took a seat facing me and proceeded to give me a goofy yet amazingly charming grin.

Unable to contain myself, I switched seats and sat in front of my dashing boyfriend.

“You just missed sitting next to me,” I sighed.

“I know.  You’re just too popular,” IP said, nodding to the old man.

“Huh.  Anyway . . .” I proceeded to chat IP’s ear off while he nodded and did the small grin thing—the smile that gently says WordNerd, I have no idea why you’re so cheery, but please, for the love of all that is good and pure and innocent, do shut up.  I am tired.

So I continued to chat.  And I did so at least until we were told that Fort Totten was experiencing a power outage and that the train we were on would only go as far as Takoma.  Shuttle buses were going to be run from Takoma to Brookland. 

To make a long story about a wait short, we got off the train, got on the next train, sat there for a while, and were then told that the Fort Totten outage had been fixed.  What followed was a very crowded train ride, with a tall dude pushing me slowly but surely into IP’s personal space.  Were I not his girlfriend, I probably would’ve pushed tall dude back and told him to—pretty please—stop bumping me into the cute stranger.  Or actually, hmm, maybe not.  I probably would’ve batted my eyelashes, instinctively poofed my cheeks out, he would’ve tried to pinch them and miss, and it would’ve been love at first poof.  Thus the WordNerd-IP saga would’ve commenced (albeit five years too late in my humble opinion).

At Metro Center, we said a quick good-bye and IP dashed to catch the Blue line train heading towards his office.

At my office, during an email flurry with friends and family, I decided to shoot off an email IP’s way, asking if he had gotten to work all right.  I ended the one sentence email with a smiley face.  Not 10 minutes later, my phone rang.

“Hey!” I said brightly (where was all this cheeriness coming from?  I woke up feeling like I’d slept underneath a slab of stone rather than a blanket.).

“Hey.  Um, did you just send me an email asking if I got to work okay?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Um, okay . . . Is there something else I need to know?”

I paused, then started snickering.  “Hon, no, it’s an innocent email.  After five years together, haven’t you realized that I am not a saucy wench out to utterly confuse you?”

“Yes, but one-liners usually mean something.  I checked your blog, I looked at the news, trying to figure out what else you were trying to say.”

“Just a friendly email sent during an email flurry.  That’s all.”

“Ah, okay.  That makes sense.”

“Heh.  You think I want to mess with you.”

“Well, if you’d put a winking smiley face at the end of the sentence instead of just a smiley face, then I’d really be worried.”

The winking smiley face.  A clear portent of imminent doom.