In today’s 9 Chickweed Lane comic strip, we find young lovers Edda and Amos sitting on a piano bench smooching while both are thinking of some musical notation symbol that means nothing to me, a person notably ignorant of musical notation, despite the rigorous 1 of research of it I spent on wikipedia.
Comic here: here
rigorous 1 minute of wikipedia research item here: here
Please explain this to me. Thanks.
That’s a whole note rest (the rectangle hanging off the line) with a fermata (the dot with curved line above it). A fermata roughly means “hold this note out as long as you like”, and is generally at the discretion of the performer.
Essentially, “stop playing for as long as you want”. Which is what it appears they’re doing…
I haven’t played too much off sheet music for quite a few years, but my grasp of symbols and terminology has apparently not escaped me. 
(I now play keyboard in a band, but studied piano for 11 years.)
Who says there ain’t no easy answers?