The Full Stop Who Wanted to be Different

By Max Bell, aged 9

One sunny morning there was a full stop.

He lived on a road of lots of letters and other punctuation, separated by rivers of white.

His neighbour was an E and his friends were Y and S. He loved the letters Y, E and S because they spelled YES.

Sometimes the full stop stayed outside his house admiring the other punctuation.

He talked a lot to E about the punctuation and about how he wished to look like them and about how much fun he thought it would be instead of being a lonely dot.

The E said emotionally, “You’re not lonely. You’ve got me. But go off and try something different if you seriously want to.”

Excitedly, the full stop bounced into Grandma’s Grammar Costume Shop. He rolled straight to the counter. There was an old lady with a beard and muscular arms with punctuation tattoos on them. She had a pink face and grey, tangled hair.

The full stop stared at her for a moment and then rolled on, trying not to look at her because she looked so terrifying. Suddenly, the old woman wheezed, “What are you after?”

“Nothing really, just a punctuation costume,” whispered the full stop. The woman answered aggressively, “go down one lane and turn right into the punctuation room.”

He jumped quickly into the changing room and tried on lots of costumes.

First he tried on the question mark.

“Who am I?” he asked the mirror. “Where am I? What is this?” he said, pointing at the floor. “Can’t anyone answer me? Should I take this off?”

The full stop took the costume off – he realised there was no point in being a question with nobody to answer him.

Then he put on the exclamation mark. “Ow! This is really uncomfortable!” he screamed. “Get it off!”

He took it off and tried on a comma.

“I look beautiful, lovely, delightful, outstanding, spectacular, dazzling and I talk way, way...” He was so dizzy that he took it off before he had even finished the sentence.

Next he slipped into a bracket.

“Hi, my name is Eric (actually it’s not. Hey! Where’s the other bracket? I need another bracket costume.” He put one more on and the second bracket appeared in the sentence).

He took it off, grumpily. “I don’t have enough money for two costumes,” complained the full stop.

Before he could try on another costume, someone grabbed his shoulder. He turned around and saw the word “OILPEC.”

“What on earth is that?” wailed the full stop.

The letters scrambled around and formed the word ‘POLICE.’

“Full Stop in the name of the law. We are the POLICE. Did you know that a full stop is missing? You’re needed outside.”

The full stop rushed outside and found the words ‘THE END’ with a space next to it. “Maybe it’s not so bad being a full stop when you’re the hero,” he laughed happily. Then he jumped into the space and everyone cheered.

THE END.