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ImageSMART TALK

by Dr. Viva Palaver


RESTROOM: Every shopping mall should have real restrooms: carpeted lounges with soft seats and no noise. Instead, they have toilets in echoing chambers far down some uninviting hallway.

Euphemisms can be hilarious as well as embarrassingly revelatory of their users' inhibitions. As the staff psychologist, I'm professionally interested. A hundred years ago, an interesting condition meant pregnant. To get that way, we often pretend the couple slept together. Who knew sleeping could be so productive? We may laugh at such prudishness yet feel uncomfortable with saying toilet or even seeing it in print. But do you really rush to a restroom for a rest? Do you go the bathroom to take a bath? Only sometimes. But if it's a bathroom, it had better have at least a shower in it.

About once a year, I attend a language conference in Europe for the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired. What a relief it is - literally - to see a sign saying toilet, or a word much like that, in a strange city at a critical moment. Often, the sign hangs right over the street, with an arrow. Now that's what I call civilization.

These remarks remind me of incontinent ordnance, which is a military euphamism for shelling our own troops by mistake.


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