I don't know what possessed me to write this story. My apologies.
E on X and Y
I thought Y was a straight-up kinda guy; the sort who could hold up his end of an adverb. That was before X turned around and got a hold of him. Though how can anyone tell if she turned around? She looks the same coming and going, if you ask me, but Y sure was impressed. He’d say hey, E, didja know she was in xylograph?
No, didn’t know that, I’d say. I’m not in that one.
He’d say, well, check out xylotomous then. She does the wildest stuff.
Yeah, I’d say, thinking she was one of these cynical hipsters, so pleased with herself for picking words nobody understands. You had to know X, always at the fashionably late end of the alphabet, sweeping in after the LMNO crowd had been and gone.
Me, I hate pretension. I show up where I’m needed even if other folks get to make all the noise. Chicks dig the silent type anyway. But Y, he’s got some deep existential issues: Am I a consonant? Am I a vowel? So when he and X hook up, they’re as inseparable as chromosomes. Made an attractive couple, I must admit, with X’s hourglass figure and Y’s broad shoulders.
Everyone else got their serifs in a bunch, though, especially with those two making googly i’s at each other. Then the happy couple decides being together for xylose and xyster wasn’t good enough. They act real cute and change exactly to exyactl. Try an hour of tough pedaling on an exyerccle, or get your bones scanned by Xy-ra.
It had to stop.
They drafted me since I work with X most often. You know, exclamatory, excusatory, that sort of thing. Not your everyday words, like I said.
I cornered Y and broke the news to him; I’ve seen her with T. He wouldn’t believe it, called me an overused lowercase runt and stormed off. Then he and X quit the alphabet altogether. That got everyone in all caps pretty quick. Where would they go? Z suggested they could get gigs tormenting 13-year-olds in algebra. P thought X might find work in the Greek alphabet.
Meanwhile, you should’ve seen the exclamation points crowding us, the punctuation equivalent of ambulance chasers. W, the fat ass, refused to sit next to Z. T said I’d slandered him. I hobbled together K and S to make an “eks” sound, but it felt awkward. I had to do double duty at the end of adverbs – happilee, stupidlee – not the most aesthetic arrangement.
W finally took it on herself to coax her girlfriend X back, and Y came with her, but I got bumped from a few words. It figures misspellings like Xtreme and Xtra would become trendy, right? Don’t ask me to butt in again; I’m a regular font of wisdom on the subject. Here’s my advice: mind your own damn p’s and q’s. But you knew that was coming, didn’t you?
Technically, this isn't a true "Spouting Off" since it's largely fictional. It grew out of an exercise at the writing workshop I attended Saturday. Participants were asked to capture the way people really speak, without any description or narrative, just voices. 
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