According to Hannah Frishberg, I became cool when periods were no longer a part of my life. That’s right – it’s cool to be postmenopausal. No more messing with those pesky periods (though I refuse to omit one here).

You may rightly wonder what I’m talking about; sometimes I do, too. This should clear things up. I read an article in the New York Post (online edition), by Hannah Frishberg. It’s about that little dot at the end of a sentence, the innocent little period, and is titled, “Young People Don’t Trust Anyone Who Uses this Punctuation Mark.” It brought me to a full stop. Seriously?

You. Have. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

This is going to be the thing that divides us?

Hannah is touting her views on texting and the use of this end-all punctuation. She claims that periods come across as “overly hostile and, worse yet, extremely uncool.”

WHO ARE CALLING HOSTILE, HANNAH? 

I thought back on the days of my life (not the soap opera) – days that included periods of youth, marriage, child-bearing, child-rearing, and empty nest. And these days were marked with periods of joy, laughter, fear, anger, peace, confusion, sorrow, searching, exhaustion, sickness, health, resting, faith, and contentment. These are the things that punctuate life; and by cracky, I’m going to use proper punctuation when I write about them. PERIOD!

I do remember being slightly hostile when on my period, but that was normal. It was nothing that a Snickers couldn’t handle. This article, though, has brought up some grammatical hostility in me, but since I’m dieting right now I can’t appease it with a Snickers. Sigh.

Stop the madness!

Honestly, I do understand what she’s talking about; it’s the extremism toward punctuation that gives me pause. If I answer a text with a yes or a no, I don’t put a period behind it. It’s not necessary. Hannah quotes Victoria Turk, who claims in her digital etiquette book that, “Only old people or troubled souls put periods at the end of every sentence.” I had no idea that the simple little period revealed so much about its user. It makes me want to send her a text right now that is full of periods. Who is troubled now, Victoria?

I suppose the exclamation point is downright violent!

Side note: In the old days of texting, you had to pay extra for it. As it became common place, my husband led the resistance to texting. He argued that people had worked hard to go from the development of Morse Code being tapped out on connected lines to actually being able to talk to people over land lines to carrying a phone in our pockets. Why would we want to take a step back? Now, of course, he’s a convert; but he had a point. Hearing someone’s voice is sweet, but texting is efficient.

In doing my due diligence for this post, I came across this quote from Matthew McConaughey that might sum things up:

“Life is a series of commas, not periods.”

He ended it with a period, so there you go. Our life may be viewed as one long run-on sentence, but it is best appreciated when broken up by proper punctuation.