She took me aside. “I don’t know where you heard this word,” she said gently, “but it is not appropriate for class.” I understood this to mean making light of mental illness wasn’t a nice thing to do and I agreed.

She recommended I take some time to rename my game. I wanted to retain the haunted element. But I wanted something more original than just “house, mansion of manor.” Then I remembered a movie poster I saw at our local cinema. It was called “The Bordello of Blood.”

The poster had an image of a big scary house on it, so clearly, bordello was a word for “big scary house.” So I proudly presented my new game to the class as “The Haunted Bordello.” This really, really happened.

The rest of the day is a blur, but it did include me being sent to the school secretary which was a weird choice. I explained the situation to her, then she excused herself & brought back more staff who I repeated the story for. I got the sense they wanted to laugh but couldn’t.

Long story short, that night my parents had to be like “Don’t use words without looking up their definitions first.” Which I do think is a good lesson.

I DID end up looking up “whorehouse” and “bordello” in the dictionary. The definition for both was “a brothel” which was ANOTHER word I didn’t know. The definition for “brothel” was “a prostitution house,” containing YET another mystery word and by then I frankly lost interest.

Oh by the way, I omitted SEVERAL other times I casually used the word “whorehouse” to peers and adults in those few months from December to April.

The End.