We were trying to figure out what to say. What to put into the memo. What was important. And what was not.
I was at the whiteboard jotting down ideas, drawing pictures of how our argument should look. She was typing into a laptop and poking holes in my scribbles and sketches, adding points that I had forgotten.
Then we switched places.
She stood at the board for a while. I sat at the table and typed. And then, having finished the bulk of our work, we switched places again.
“Can we go home?” I asked.
She looked at what I had written.
“Not yet. I need to insert a few commas. So many words, you know.”
I turned to look at her—whatever. I wanted to go home. So I turned to the blackboard and erased our trails while she sat back at the laptop.
When I finished and the board was clean again, I turned around.
“Hmph,” she said. “It doesn’t need commas, afterall.”
And then we went home.