Originally published in The Clifton Courier, March 7, 2018

I’m not someone who can lie easily.

A lie curdles in my stomach. Lying to me is like drinking room-temperature milk hungover on a hot day: I could do it under extreme circumstances, but I find it awfully unpleasant and avoid it at all costs.

Also, given my character was shaped by Disney movies and crime dramas, I’ve found lying to be illogical. The truth, I’ve been conditioned to believe, will always come out. So it makes sense* to be as honourable and upfront as you can in the first instance.

* That’s right, my morals are based on fear of the consequences, not virtue.

Honesty, then, is my favourite policy.

Not only is it ethical, but logistically, it just makes things easier. It means you don’t have to go to all the effort of covering your tracks and it saves you from having to mentally keep track of your fibs.

However, there is such a thing as being too honest. Being too upfront. Giving too much information.

This is dangerous and can make things extremely unpleasant conversationally. You want to tell the truth, but not everyone needs to hear the whole, hairy truth.

This is why euphemisms are so handy. They’re like special code words society has made up to say things without actually having articulate the shameful truth out loud.

You can say something like “I’m trying to save” instead of revealing quite how much of a mess your financial situation is. This magical phrase hints at what’s happening, with a comfortable fog of ambiguity clouding the truth.

And it’s a lovely way of explaining your frugal behaviour in such a way that it won’t make people deeply concerned for you.

Because no one needs to know that you’re buying your undies in bulk budget packs from the supermarket. Or that most of your fruit comes from the free fruit bowl in the staffroom. And people would start getting worried about you if you told them the only source of red meat you’ve had in the past two weeks was the table at a party you weren’t invited to but somehow ended up at. Generally, most people wouldn’t be impressed to hear that you ate three pieces of lamb and a cold sausage that had been presumably sitting out for hours at a stranger’s house. That takes you from “money conscious” to “scummy human ibis” preeeetty quickly.

Then there’s the polite terms for physical ailments.

I like how “upset stomach” can substitute for the graphic details that societal norms prevent you from explicitly revealing.

This blanket term means you don’t need to get down to particulars. It’s not necessary to give a lengthy description of what went down. There’s no need to even specify from which orifice you’ve exploded from. You can leave that information out. It becomes up to the listener’s imagination to fill in the details, if that’s what they want to do. They have the option to think no further about the unpleasantness that occurred. They get the message that you are unwell without any of the grossness.

And using the term “upset stomach” means people usually get the message not to pry for extra details, which is a good thing because if they don’t ask follow up questions you won’t have to tell them, for example, that you came within 30 seconds of pooing your pants at the supermarket and completely redecorating the floor of the bakery aisle.

Then there’s “I was a bit tipsy”, which is a broad way of saying “I made everyone make a toast to ginger ale and was yelling the lyrics to Disney songs”.

I also like throwing a cheeky “I’m a bit seedy” out there instead of saying “I may vomit at any time and can’t support my own head right now”.

And these are all great. But, as you’ve probably realised, I perhaps don’t use them enough. The only euphemism I frequently employ is when I refer to myself a “a columnist”, which we all know means “I overshare the graphic and depressing details of my life with people who really don’t need to hear another one of my vomit stories”.