The Dot

Once upon a time there was a dot. There was nothing especially unique about this dot, he was after all simply a dot. It was known to be said about him that he was uniquely symmetrical. Symmetry being a key characteristic among such literary characters. The only other thing that could be said about this round, evenly proportioned figure is that his black was evenly distributed. He was not a smudge, which was common among the dot community, but this lettering did not smear outside of his lines. His color, of which he was quite proud, was very evenly distributed.

Much of his life was spent being utilized at the end of a sentence in the form of a period. Giving him an even keeled personality. He was not loud and obnoxious like an exclamation point and he did not run on excessively like the dreaded comma. Throughout his literary lifetime, he did envy the colon, two dots atop each other, twice as much fun to be had. However, he loathed the semicolon, which, to him, was pretentious in its thought that it offered a more significant pause than a period. Used to punctuate a list or series, he often considered, using more words does not make you ‘more significant.’ This dot was always especially mindful not to think these thoughts with too much emotion or emphasis, necessitating the need of an exclamation point.

After a long period of time, time being hard to understand for a dot, serving as a period in an article about a cat’s two-month, 900-mile journey home from Wyoming to California the dot was moved. He was happy for the change of scenery, even though he held the place of honor as the last figure in the article, it would be nice to get away from annoying spacing of the lower-case y. He did not have anything against the letter, but the way she spent so much of her letter below the baseline, hanging there like she has some kind of tail was bothersome for our friend the dot. He was happy for the new scenery and hoped to be placed next to a letter that spent its time above the line.

“Serendipity!” The dot hollered. With so many characters in existence, so many languages encapsulating that number, it was rare for a dot to be chosen to be the last character in a summary, sentence, prose, pamphlet or book. It was certainly next to impossible for it to happen twice. Yet it had. Our friend the dot was not only the concluding character in a book, a treasure, but was chosen to be so in a Graphic Novel. Every letter’s dream! To convey a thought in a word is one thing. To be punctuation another. To do so in a novel is near the top of aspirations for all characters. Topped only by the graphic novel. Graphic, to be marked by clear lifelike or vividly realistic description. The dot had ascertained that which an enumerable amount of typesets had only dreamt about. This equidistantly round, evenly distributed colored dot had achieved Nirvana, it could not get any better than this. Or could it.

Taking in the new scenery around, he loved the spacious end of page backyard. With ¾’s of a blank page behind him, there was nothing encumbering him. The dot laid there with pride, hoping the black hue he emitted showed the pride he had with his new existence.

So taken by the real estate of blank page was he, it was quite some time before he noticed the new neighbor. The idea of neighbors was not new to the dot, granted he had spent quite some time at an end lot, he had only had a neighbor on one side and like this setup. He was familiar with the lower-case y. He had once known a lower-case d, who he thought was very rude, always keeping his back to the dot. He had heard of, but never experienced a capital letter of any type, that was his lot in life as a dot, more often known as a period. He knew people that had relationships with capital letters and had rarely heard anything good about them. Their place at the front of sentences, as titles and proper nouns, it seems, he had heard, that they were always looking down at the rest of us. He was happy to be at the end of the sentence, even more happy to be at the end of the literature. Sure, there was always the beginning of a sentence, he had seen capital letters from afar, but the age-old two spaces between sentences had kept him from ever interacting with them.

After his contentment waned, enjoying the ¾ blank page, the dot looked at the western side of his real estate. If possible, he would have fallen off the page. “What is this?” He exclaimed. Taking a closer look, his black wanted to run. Suddenly wishing his typeset was closer, he desired to see more of this new neighbor, one that he had never experienced before: A lower-case s.

Knowing it was rude to be peering, he did not care. Never had he seen such a curve on a letter like that, making her uniquely a female character. He thanked his lucky stars that she was not a capital S, not understanding how he would have handled the extreme curve provided. As it was, his thoughts staggered.

For days, months, even years the lower-case s and the dot ruminated together, they were two peas in a pod. Inseparable. Knowing each other as well as any two fonts had even known one another. The Time New Roman typeset with a number 12 font size did not feel adequate, the couple felt as though together they were Cooper Black with a 72-size feeling limiting to them. With her left to right curvatures, making things plural, sometimes possessive and his declaration of the end, the couple soared in a literary manner. The perfect pair amongst lettering.

Perhaps it was his storybook duty as the end of a sentence, the end of a book, the end, that caused the relationship to come to an end. There were millions of invitations, birthday cards, banners being written each year. Each with the need of punctuation.

The dot became punctuation that wasn’t punctuation at all. Nestled between a loathsome lower-case x and a lower-case c in an adult website advertisement for a webpage, he had gone from the highest of heights to the lowest of lows. He was looked at more often than ever, mostly by men. Finding himself in treacherous locations he would not wish upon anyone.

What happened to the lower-case s? She became an ornamental character of the highest of honors, military dog tags for a solider named Rob.