How to Keep a Clean Colon (Um… the Punctuation Kind)

Jack’s sun-bronzed face sud­denly faded into the same color as the moon hid­ing behind the wispy gray clouds: It was obvi­ous that he was upset. The only color left on his face was the crim­son red that was pul­sat­ing through his over­sized ears. He stood shirt­less on his front porch star­ing in dis­be­lief at his old friend Dave.

“I didn’t mean for it to hap­pen this way, Jack,” Dave said. “It was sup­posed to be a joke.”

Jack col­lapsed into the front porch swing and buried his face in his hands. Dave silently stepped back a few feet just in case Jack decided to lunge at him. After a few awk­ward moments, Jack stood up and walked towards Dave. His voice quiv­ered as he con­tin­ued inter­ro­gat­ing his long time neigh­bor: “How in the world, could this be a joke? How would any­one in their right mind see this as funny?

“I real­ize it’s not funny now, but in my head, I just thought…”

“You just thought?” Jack inter­rupted: “Dave you weren’t think­ing. There was no intel­li­gent rea­son­ing going on when you came up with this lit­tle scheme!”

“Please let me explain,” Dave pleaded, tak­ing another step toward the stairs.

“Wait!” Jack shouted. “I don’t need an expla­na­tion from you and here’s why: you’re a lying SOB, you’re a trai­tor, and you’re out of time. You can save your lame excuses for the judge when I call the cops and have you arrested!”

Jack reached for his cell phone to place the call. In a panic, Dave tried to grab the phone from Jack’s hands. As the two men wres­tled for pos­ses­sion of the phone, they lost their foot­ing and tum­bled over the porch rail­ing. As Jack’s head hit the ground, Dave heard the crack.

“Jack, Jack!” Dave said with a fury of des­per­a­tion. There was no response. He watched the color fade from Jack’s ears: his friend was gone.

Dave took a moment to gather his wits: he decided he needed to get rid of Jack’s body. He found the keys to Jack’s car and loaded the body into the trunk. He grabbed some black garbage bags and a shovel and threw them in the back seat. Just as he started to leave, he sud­denly remem­bered his prac­ti­cal joke-turned-bad. He reached down and picked up the deflated whoopee cush­ion from the porch swing and tossed it in the trunk as well. It was vitally impor­tant that he dis­pose of all the incrim­i­nat­ing evidence.

I enjoy your blog thor­oughly. This is the first time I've ven­tured to post any­thing, though. My sce­nario may seem child­ish and a bit raw, so I apol­o­gize up front. I am a speech com­mu­ni­ca­tion major–who likes to write and wants to improve–and I enjoy learn­ing about com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rela­tion­ship dynam­ics, espe­cially between girls/women. Most recently, my inter­est has turned to aggres­sion in girls. That's why this came to mind. So, here goes:

"Marie spent end­less hours skim­ming through Facebook to read the lat­est hap­pen­ings with her friends. Heaven for­bid she ever pick up the phone to con­verse one-to-one: "This is faster," she rea­soned. Then, as if she had been legswept from behind, she saw it: "Marie puts out to any guy who pays atten­tion to her." It was Connie–Marie's best friend–who had com­mented on Layla's wall.

Furiously, Marie retorted, "And what about you, Connie? Weren't you just say­ing the other night how you felt bad because you had been with three dif­fer­ent guys in two nights? Talk about putting out. Where do you get your energy?" In a flash, Connie fired off a response, as if she had been crouch­ing in the trenches wait­ing for Marie to step on the land­mine remark. What ensued was a 15-minute, no-holds barred Facebook wall war for all to see and join. Marie's wounds were deep. She couldn't believe what was hap­pen­ing: her best friend back­stabbed her, a for­mer boyfriend accused her of being trashy, and her worst enemy chimed in every cou­ple of com­ments with a resound­ing "LM_AO!"

She picked up the phone to call Marie before slam­ming it back down and fum­ing to her­self: "What the h___! This would only mat­ter if I wanted to con­tinue the friend­ship. Whatever! I've put up with too much from her! I'm done! But I will get even. Just wait, Connie. You'll regret this day for the rest of your life. The skele­tons in your closet are com­ing to life."

I’m really not sure if this is right. I think, except for the way it’s used with lists, I am going to avoid colons. They’re cute but too con­fus­ing, and semi-colons aren’t much bet­ter, maybe they’re even worse.

“They can’t lay eggs in the trees, John. It won’t work.” She was clean­ing the chicken house as she spoke. It was a large chicken house about the size of a small log cabin.

“But they’re sup­posed to be free range. We’re a nat­ural farm,” he said. Rubbing his tem­ples and won­der­ing if he was hear­ing things he thought: wasn’t she the one who wanted to get the Natural Farm cer­tifi­cate, and the hens, the same per­son was now get­ting ready to put his flea mar­ket finds into the hen house?

“Go get that big pile of junk that you had in the spare room and put it in this house, right now,” she said. “All of that junk goes out here: the tools, the chairs, the golf clubs, the archery equip­ment; and the tillers go, all of the tillers. And don’t for­get the exer­cise equipment.”

“My tools, my fur­ni­ture. What about the hens?” he said: he didn’t like ani­mals tak­ing prece­dence over his stuff, but he wasn’t sure that was hap­pen­ing here, because what was going on wasn’t at all clear to John.

“The hens?”

“Where are they going to lay eggs. You don’t want them to use the trees and they can’t use the house if all my stuffs in there,” he said.

“You are going to build them a new coop, over there near that lit­tle oak, and those black­berry bushes. Fence all around it, the coop, the tree and the bushes. Then they can have the coop and the bushes and I won’t have to walk all though the woods look­ing for the eggs,” she said.