Everyone has a mental dictionary, where our brains go to put personal connotations to words. For example, my definition of pain used to be “that searing sensation in your eye when you prepare a hot pepper for dinner and, later that night, remove your contact lenses and essentially deposit one million Scoville heat units into your eye via the oils that cling to your finger despite repeated washing.”
Tonight, the word pain has been redefined in my mental dictionary to mean “undergoing behind-the-ear pore extraction during a facial by a pint-sized Russian grandmother.” (I wanted to ask her why she felt compelled to brutally squeeze the gunk out of the pores on the fold of skin behind my ears, but my mouth was frozen in a silent scream.)
