Well, as Joan Didion once remarked, either you care about commas or you don’t. If you are one of that select band do not miss this glorious email from Giles Coren . One indefinite article was removed from his restaurant review. Yes, an ‘a’. It kept him awake; it brought him to the edge of resignation. God bless the Old Country, occasionally.
You introduce this as being about commas, when it’s actually about an indefinite article. But, as you have drawn our attention to commas (and by the way, it’s nice to hear from you again after a month, and I hope you had a happy birthday in the meantime) we’ve naturally looked in this light at both Coren’s piece and your own.
The sentence in question would be better with the comma removed. Admittedly, the verbs in the last two phrases are both present participles, suggesting that it’s the boys and girls who are doing the ‘wondering’, but the comma introduces – unnecessarily and incorrectly – the ambiguity that it’s Coren who is thinking about ‘A nosh’ (though he may well have been in fact so thinking – and perhaps his comma is a Fehlleistung letting this slip).
In your own piece, there’s a weak case for a comma after ‘commas’ (rhetorically stronger). I think one is really required, however, after ‘band’.
Thanks for posting the link. It’s a great read.