How about a career change? An early retirement opportunity? You know, employee transition. Well, the personnel are being realigned, the staff is being re-engineered, down-sized, ah… workforce imbalance correction. Or, in other words, YOU’RE FIRED!There are specific words and phrases — in the English language — that are solely used to dance around, dilly dally, or beat around the bush. We call these euphemisms. Euphemisms at first glance, appear so that the speaker sounds cool, or should I say linguistically flamboyant? I mean, who wants to use ketchup when you can have fresh tomato puree? Ketchup just sounds like a sound effect. Nobody is ever jobless, but they’re just between jobs. There are no garbage men or maids, but instead, they are sanitation and domestic engineers. Nobody is homeless, they’re just on. the. streets. And no, you’ll never be broke, you’re just going through a temporary! negative! cash! flow! Nobody will ever get speeding tickets, you’ll only forcefully obtain a fast driving award. Nobody dies, but they, as my grandma would say, answer to God’s calling. You don’t go to funeral services, but you make an appointment with the post-bereavement maintenance office. (pause) Nobody is ever wrong! We are simply committing an innocent crime of terminological inexactitude. On a more personal note, when I was little, I had a dog called Marie. We shared great memories throughout the 11 years we lived together. Road trips, picnics over the weekend… it was a paradise. Then one day, I came home and panicked. I couldn’t find Marie. “Marie went to Australia,” my mom told me. I was a bit sad. I couldn’t even say goodbye to her. But, as a kid, I also thought it was super-duper, awesome and mind-exploding that Marie could go to a cool country. I had imagined Marie hanging out with koalas and kangaroos, eating her food with vegemite, singing along to Men at Work, and barking out “Good day, mate” to all her neighboring dogs. My 11 year old self thought, Marie got to stay in another country? Cool beans!Another time, I remember being called “full-figured” or “gravitationally challenged” by my friends. I even heard adults saying, (british mom) “ah… she must be a bit of a salad dodger.” I had no idea what they meant back then. Thinking about it now, I clearly understand what my friends were saying to the fat. kid. I was. I know they were trying not to hurt my feelings, but I was a bit of an inflated person. One plus side was that I didn’t have to worry about getting kidnapped. Unless you were willing to put a lot of extra exertion on a kidnapping, nobody was shoving me into a car.