I have only one gift to offer as a friend. It’s not loyalty; that’s a rare quality for people to appreciate. I am patient, yes, but that is hardly a noticeable trait. And I can’t give wise advice; I have the life experience of a 10-year-old. Were it not for my one talent, I might have few friends.

I am an expert in happiness. I know it better than any other emotion, and I love everything about it. I enjoy watching it spread across angry faces, I like to find the smile lines on older people’s skin, and I take pleasure in making people happy. Something few people understand about happiness is that it’s a disease, a contagious disease with universal symptoms. The most common symptom is a smile.

Through years of observation I have come to an important conclusion: the easiest way to infect others with happiness is to be happy yourself. The key to spreading happiness is a mixture of extreme optimism, laughing and smiling, and using as many exclamation points as possible. I do this as often as I can in order to balance out the pessimists and so-called “realists” of the world.

I find exclamation points the most effective method. Whatever the mood of my sentence, whether I’m writing, texting, or speaking, I add one. I have become so accustomed to using them that I often find it necessary to take them out of my essays or remove them from the ends of my passwords.

I know what I’m doing when I add exclamation points. I’m telling people not to worry. I’m showing them that everything is all right, and that even if it isn’t, it will be soon. I’m helping them look on the bright side, to read their troubles from a different point of view. When I say I’m “okay” you might worry, but when I’m “okay!!” you probably won’t think twice. The power of exclamation is something I take advantage of whenever I can.

There was a time, however, when I lost my exclamation points.

As soon as my phone’s screen lit up, my face would too. I smiled with delight. Someone I liked very much had texted me. I replied as rapidly as I could, employing a plethora of exclamation points. This person was someone I believed deserved all of the happiness I could give.

“Can I ask you a question?” my source of happiness texted.

“Of course!!” I replied.

“Why do you use so many exclamation points?”

I didn’t tell him it was because I wanted to infect others with my happiness. The spread of happiness is less effective when people know what you’re up to.

“I dunno. I just like them!!”

“They seem a little excessive to me,” he wrote. “It’s so unnecessary.”

I began to doubt the data I had accumulated on happiness. If the person who made me happiest believed that my methods were ineffective, maybe I needed to reevaluate. It’s clear to me now that I shouldn’t have been so quick to accept his opinion. This person didn’t even realize what he had done to me, and at first, I didn’t either.

Thus began the great downfall of my favorite punctuation mark. Exclamation points disappeared from my neutral texts and even from my sad ones. They began to appear only when I was truly happy, which, as the year progressed, was less often. Most of my friends couldn’t handle this sadder version of me, and it made sense; it wasn’t really me at all. I started to spread a different disease: depression. Other friends became unavailable because they had their own problems and couldn’t deal with mine.

Eventually the very person who’d started this stopped talking to me, and I was fully abandoned. No one wants to feel like they are being pulled under by a friend. I had transformed from a little ball of sunshine into a lead weight, and the change was far too dramatic and sudden to be dealt with by others. I spent much of my time alone, with no one to comfort me and no one to confide in. I had lost the part of me people liked most.

I may have hated losing my exclamation points, but I don’t regret it. Experiencing what I did made me realize how much they meant to me. I needed to understand the emptiness at the end of a sentence without exclamation. I needed to realize how heavy I had become without it.

I finally emerged from the depths of this episode through an explosion of exclamation. I was infected by my favorite disease again, and I felt light. I am thankful to the person who told me I didn’t need them. Because of him, I now know that I needed them more than anything.

I believe in adding exclamation points to the end of all my sentences. I do it to remind others of the positive side, to show my excitement about what they say. I even do it to make sure they realize that I enjoy talking to them. I use them in writing and aloud. I accidentally use them all the time. I use them in part to reassure myself of my own happiness. But most importantly, I use them because they are a part of me. They are one of many things that define me, and thanks to my past experiences, no one will ever take them away from me again!