A "Horror" Story

And a "Merry Christmas!" too

True Story:

Last week I took our support staff to lunch for Christmas. The other attorney in our office was out sick with COVID, which Karen and I had just gotten over.  

On that somber note, I was starting to relate the thing that I’ve told my two therapists about how “I employ humor to hold the horror at bay,” to which statement when asked, as both my therapists have each done, “What IS the horror?” I always answer with the melodramatic pretentiousness of a teenager, “Death!”

This time instead of asking me, “What IS the horror,” one of my colleagues asked simply, “Does Karen know?”

“What?” I stumbled.

“Your whore,” she said.  “Does Karen know about your ‘whore?’”

“HORROR!” I exclaimed.  “H-O-R-R-O-R . . . NOT whore!” 

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were just making a joke.”

My pretentious moment passed, the absurd conversation turned to other things, and I never did get to deliver my “Death” line.

And I’m pretty sure now that I’ll never be able to affect my pretentious teenager melodrama again.   

My “whore” killed it!

Merry Christmas!