There was a comma where a semicolon should have been. This drove her crazy. She thought of actually shooting herself in the head but that would have required a 3-day waiting period; besides, she hated guns. So she kept going through the papers, red slashes here, smiley faces there. But many more slashes than smileys. Soon she just started making slashing smiley faces. Her students wouldn't know the difference, she thought.

After all, they couldn't tell the difference between simple punctuation so how could they get her irony?

John, her favorite student and best writer in her Senior Classics class crept up behind her.

There was no smiley on his face. His father noticed the gun safe was empty one minute too late. But in the end, she got what she wanted; she would never have to grade another bad English paper again.