Civility

She used to punctuate sentences with "thanks." Never "thank you," either — "thanks." I didn't notice at first. There were pleasantries, first-date niceties:

"After you." "Thanks."

"Your drink." "Thanks."

"The best I've ever had." "Thanks."

The habit became more noticeable with time. I began to catalog the uses bit by bit, subconsciously at first, then facetiously and finally humorlessly, compulsively.

The courteous catchall: "Can you pass the spinach? Thanks."

The conspicuous reminder: "You remembered to pick up milk, yeah? Thanks."

The jab of irony: "You did all this for me? Thanks."

I even had a category of "other" for the times when, for the life of me, I could not decide where to begin, when any precise meaning had been trampled by this recurrent hiccup, when sentences were beyond diagramming and sometimes even the part of speech seemed a mystery.

"I need to clean. Thanks."

Was that a request for help? To be left alone? Was it merely a filled pause, or was some meaning there to be communicated? For that matter, was I to respond?

I went through stages after I first began to perceive the quirk, from annoyance to, eventually, not only acceptance but actual enjoyment. I looked forward to it — a real-life catchphrase, a beat to keep track of conversations. I must have smiled at each exceedingly polite mumble. From there it was only a short time before diversion gave way to preoccupation.

I was confused, then, of what to make of the message: What had been its root, what emotion had it leapt from, what reply was I to send? And each question pulled out another — most pressingly, was I being thanked for our past or futures?

But the questions came without answers, and the words continued to stare out from the screen.

"We shouldn't see each other anymore. Thanks."