that one time I had herpes

This morning I woke up from a series of dreams about failure and cowardice which are both big fears of mine. And so I had to find a way to put myself back on track and focus on things that make me feel brave an successful. As strange as it may sound, I was brought back to the time I announced to a bank full of people that I had herpes.

It was because of the obnoxious new teller who had just joined the Wells Fargo where I was working at the time. He was one of those people who didn't understand appropriate humor for the workplace and as such, used to make jokes about being a giant herpe and wanting to hug everyone. Don't ask me why he thought this was funny. I thought it was a gross but relatively harmless joke- turns out  I was wrong.

During an evening with some of the girls from work, I learned that a couple of them actually had herpes and it made them feel like a pariah when he made those kinds of jokes. It was especially hurtful because they had both contracted the ailment from cheating partners.

The next time he embarked on that offensive tirade, I became infuriated. Without thinking about it I announced to the entire bank that I had herpes and that the jokes he was making were making me feel bad about myself. He was completely taken aback by this (as were the girls whose secret I had stolen) but managed to stutter out an apology and go back to his workstation. The look of gratitude on those women's faces was worth any amount of judgement that might come from those who didn't know the real story.

And so the point of all this is that it's important to stand up for others. Or maybe it's to be careful about the things you say because you might not know who you are hurting. Or actually it might be that you should hang around when I'm irritated cause I'm likely to do something insane like announce to my coworkers that I have a sexually transmitted disease. Anyway I feel better now, back to daily life. Thanks for listening.