How Parentheses fell in love with Bracket and gave birth to a Full Stop.

Parentheses was a male, 20 years old and happily snoring and enjoying each nights sleep. At 5 and a half feet tall, he wasn’t the picture of a perfect man that girls dreamed would come riding, riding and riding on a white stallion and take her off to some strange land named ‘Atlantis’ where she finds that he was the prince of that heavenly abode. In fact, he wasn’t anything that any girl would ever dream of. Just-another-guy-next-door suited his image well. He was always looked upon by his friends as a loner in life. Girls and women were a big No-No to him. He was well satisfied with multitude of the videos he used to watch with his friends, seconded porn magazines that he used to buy for a penny, and eyeing the busty female classmates he never had. He only used to yawn and dream of eating French fries, when his friends were busy discussing their personal exploits on the different girls they could lay their lips on for a French kiss. Funny? No. He just wasn’t interested, that’s why. But of course, that did not mean darting his eyes down the neckline of any girl he saw was forsaken. Many times he thought ‘this is the girl’ whenever he saw a rather enterprising quality in some woman he had the chance to relate to, in some way. But never ever did he fall into it which he used to term as ‘a trap’. He was happy though of how he was moving along with the tick of the clock. No gals. No worries. No responsibilities. Life was just happy and gay always.

17 years and busy counting her days for her last schooldays, Bracket was a damsel that any guy would fall in love at the first sight. Beautiful curves augmented the beauty of her lusty eyes and rosy lips. Thin and elegant, she had commendable assets that cannot be described with words of any language as it might take pages alone to finish the description. But, despite having that awe inspiring looks, and of course getting countless proposals from innumerable boys who always asked her why she was always seated, Bracket was never ready. Though she did like each and every boy who had proposed her, she was sure that they would back off if they saw her legs, or rather, saw her leg. This was because she had only one. The other was contained in a bracket. This fear made her discard such emotions called love and lust. She pledged herself that she would only live for the world. Dedicate her life for humanity. Become a ‘Mother Teresa-sort-of-angelic-figure’ and do deeds that normal people can never even think of. She even did a ‘Google Search’ to find out deeds that normal people can never even think of. But alas Google was not lucky to find answers for such a request. She never put a forlorn face in answer to such a failure.

So here starts the fairy tale of two loners in life; loners till Mr. Cupid surprisingly hit the target. He was so happy of having improved his aim that he bought his best friend Judas, a pint of Fosters beer.
Sitting one day on her wheelchair on the veranda, Bracket was busy trying to comprehend why her favourite Mastiff was eating grass, she was surprised when her friend and neighbour walked in with Parentheses trailing behind, hiding himself from the mastiff, which was too busy tasting grass to take note of the new stranger. She was being introduced to Parentheses, but she was still busy trying to infer the unusual behaviour of her dog. Did the dog hear any nonsensical talk which said eating meat was truly blasphemous?

“After all, dogs are basically non-vegetarian” was what she said when she was asked if they could get to talk to her father. “No wonder I came to invite your dog for a meaty party. Sorry, I did not mean that about your dad.” said Parentheses spontaneously and immediately regretted making that cocky remark. She let out a hearty laugh and then invited them in. From then on, it was like a film story. Love and dreams bloomed. He was the handsome Prince of Paupers and she was Cinderella. Everything happened smoothly, except of course the songs and dance sequences. Both of them would have been a big flop; Bracket, since having only one leg and Parentheses because, because he was just Parenthesis and not John Travolta. Phone bills started to rise; Parenthesis started to borrow and slowly started to fail meeting all such loans. Bracket, on the other hand was not in any sort of trouble, because she knew her fathers bank account would take coffers larger than the titanic to fill. Finally she started paying for him too. Years flew by though not many only two and one morning Parenthesis and another friend took the north road to fetch a pail of blessings when Parentheses fell down and broke his crown, and his car came tumbling after. Parenthesis forgot his name. He forgot Bracket.

Bracket never came to know about this accident till after 2 months. When she came to know of it she was down in the drains. (that was just used as a figure of speech, not the nearby sewage drain). She now understood why he had not been responding to her calls. Finally when she got through to him, Bracket tried her best reminding him of everything that went through the past two years. But Parenthesis was astounded to learn all these from a girl he hardly knew, rather remembered. After all, in his period of recuperation, he had only reached the ‘schooling years’ where he was always chanting ‘No No’ to girls. One day Bracket came to see him. Parentheses saw her and he was suddenly was pulled back into the lane of past memories. Everything came back to him in a flash. Bracket, who she was, the relation, the love they shared, the mastiff she raised, her dad he met and finally, the telephone bills. Suddenly he twisted his eyebrows in trying to recollect the amount and with great difficulty counted the amount to be 6500. And by God, he was totally broke right now. What if she wants all that money back? He smiled at Bracket and said, “Sorry, I don’t recognize you, Bracket. Bye!” Bracket never knew that her father had been there to pay him a visit and had threatened him to stay away or he would be forced to take her away for good, which was what finally happened. After 2 months, off they flew off to the UK. Parentheses could only stand back staring at the sky murmuring the song Richard Marx sang a few couple of decades ago; “Right Here Waiting for You.”

Thus Full Stop was born.

“Hi I am Exclamation, your sister’s friend.” said a voice from behind. Parenthesis turned around to see a damsel smiling at him. Far away, somewhere yonder something glimmered in the sunlight. Was it a shining arrow? Was Mr Cupid aiming at him once again?