I remember learning about the semicolon in grade school and thinking to myself, "You're telling me there will be a time I'll have two distinct thoughts that neither warrant the casualness of a comma nor deserve the finality of a period? I shall write this off as some grown-up fantasy!" But now that I am grown up, damn; I love semicolons; I overuse them. I now embrace opportunities to marry togetherness with separation, to move ideas in slight but significant new directions.

But also, as a full-fledged adult, I have become privy to the real reason grown-ups punctuate semicolonically: to convey to others ever-so-subtly, "Yes, I do think I'm better than you" without having to say anything of the sort. And come to think of it, therein lies the grown-up fantasy I long suspected.