Goal - for Dark Days of Promise to go viral. I hope you all catch it and feel better because of it.

Horsey Sauce ain't like Momma's used to be.

Excerpt from a novel - Houdini's Vice - that is being deleted but it shadows an experience I had. Mom used to grow horseradish in the garden for Dad, but we kids, or at least I never had it.

                          

Porsche wrinkled her nose remembering her first experience with the spicy condiment. She had attended a work luncheon her first year away at school. She ordered a Rueben plate. The horseradish arrived on the side and not wanting to offend her host, Porsche had dressed her sandwich with a generous dollop. The first bite hadn't been bad with just a hint of heat. Her second bite, a borderline unlady-like one at that, hadn't proved as benign. The heat started at her nose, tickling at first. She inhaled and the rush to her sinuses cleared them for the landing of a B52 bomber in the dessert, it was time to send in the rain in the form of her tears. She blinked them back feeling like the country bumpkin she knew herself to be. Frantic for relief, she grabbed her water glass intending to flood the barren wastes of her facial cavity. It proved the wrong thing to do as water only makes straight horseradish all the more potent. Could she have done more to send the steam out through her ears? She doubted it and even though years had passed, even the mention of horseradish made her cringe. Trevor was insane if he liked the stuff.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Ilene laughed. "You look like I just fed you peas and liverwurst. Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Porsche waved off her mother's concern. "I just don't like horseradish."

"What?" Ilene asked in surprise. "You used to love horsey sauce when you were a kid."

"Mom, horsey sauce with a horse crazed child and horseradish are two very different things." Porsche hurried out of the kitchen not wanting to explain her run-in to her mother.

(Photos belong to other websites.)