I Don't Like That Ho Ho Ho

Here it is 7:30 on a Friday night. I should be at some Christmas party or something. Instead I am blogging. But it's not like I haven't already gone out to a romantic dinner, stopped by the patisserie shop for a tart framboise and purchased a darling Christmas tree from the Baums. Soon, I intend to get a snuggly in my bed and read the BOM until I fall asleep.

But not before I get this off my chest.
Yesterday I was in Salt Lake with Christopher. As we made our way down town en route to the Red Iguana (mole poblano=no problemo) I saw a dancing Santa near some corner by a Christmas tree lot. He was really rocking out, pretending that his Christmas tree sign was a guitar. (Think of the Little Ceasers dancing guy on the corner of 5th West and Bulldog. I always wonder what he is listening to that makes him shake it so tight in front of the greater Provo/Orem area. I'm all, I'll take whatever he's listening to.)
So this Santa was rockin' around the Christmas trees whilst out of his mouth I heard this:
Ho Ho Ho.
Not unusual, I know, but for me, those Ho x3 are like the password for an undercover trained assassin to shoot. Which I mean to say Ho Ho Ho triggers something inside of me which was ingrained in my head since middle school. I am really struggling with the ability to write what I mean here, so I will say it like this...
In seventh grade I decided to "go steady with" a red headed boy named Aaron. This kid really liked me, and he was an 8th grade football player, and what did I know? So for two weeks all I heard from Aaron was his persistence with wanting to kiss me. But see, that was still pretty icky for me to think about and so I promptly dumped him.
And that is when it began.
Waiting outside for my mom to pick me up from school one day I heard two boys laughing really loud, instead they were laughing like this "Ho Ho Ho Ho!" Strange, I thought.
The next day I turned a corner on the way to class. More Ho-Hoing from boys all the way down the hall. Over the next several weeks Ho etc. was in my face everywhere I went. Indeed, I was very confused.
And this is the reason for the confusion: I did not know that "Ho" was short for whore, which couldn't have been very useful to know because I did not know, at the time, what a whore was. I had just come from Wasatch Elementary School. By the time I graduated I knew 2 things: Every patriotic song ever written and how to eat Japanese rice paper candy thanks to the Wymount foreign students. I went from being Beehives President to a Ho(whore). It was a very difficult time. Especially because I became a whore for not wanting to make out at my tender age. And yet, Aaron had hired almost every cool boy in the school to call me a Ho on any occasion.
Yikes that Dixon Middle School. My mother had a special prayer in her heart every morning I boarded that Blue Bird bus headed to the other side of the tracks (which is, big breath, where I live now).
It took me a good 6 months to figure out what Ho Ho Ho meant, as other Oak Hills friends were equally as oblivious. As for Aaron and the other boys, my accidental indifference to their cruelty did them in.
That is when they started to call me Jigglers.
(But let's not get started on that story tonight.)
This year the Ho et al torture has got to stop. I am tired of thinking of every Santa as a pervert (I have always felt a little sheepish sitting on Ol' St. Nick's lap -don't tell me I am alone in this, it is very Freud, Have you been a good girl? He asks) just for laughing like an jolly man should. This year I am going to forgive red headed Aaron in my heart.
I forgive you Aaron!
I forgive you, you, you ho, ho, homely red headed excuse for an 8th grade football player.

Well, there is always next year.