I’m a wimp. I once tried to sign up for an assertiveness training class but I was afraid to tell the receptionist that I broke her pen while I was filling out the sign-in sheet, so I left.

I don’t know where all my suppressed anger goes. I am guessing the spleen, judging by the expression “venting one’s spleen,” meaning to boisterously express one’s anger.

By now my spleen must be a pulsating mass of verbal venom. One day some unlucky person will be the one who irks me that one last time. My head will spin around and I will spew profanity and split pea soup like Linda Blair in that old movie “The Exorcist.”

I thought it was going to happen a few weeks ago. I was expecting a house guest who has a baby and I went shopping for supplies. I asked a young lady who was stocking shelves where I might find the diapers. She glanced at me and said, “Aisle 12.”

Guess where she sent me? To the diapers for incontinent adults. There they were, nestled among the denture adhesives, laxatives, and reading glasses. The nerve of her! I may be no Spring chicken, but as yet none of my orifices are leaking inappropriately.

Stomping back to her area, I fixed her with a frosty glare and said through gritted teeth (my own,I might add), “I MEANT baby diapers!”

I could swear she smirked at me, the little twerp. So I did what any self-respecting mature lady would do: I peed on her strapped sandals.

Okay, I didn’t. The idea did occur to me. But no, I forced yet one more outburst down into my spleen, which by then must have been bulging like an aneurysm. My spleen began to rumble like an awakening volcano.

Someone shouted, “Look out! She’s going to blow!”

My head had just started to spin when arthritis caused my neck to seize up like our old Buick when I ignored the “low oil” light.

The doctor says I need a neck brace. I found them in aisle 12, right next to the adult diapers.