Euphemisms are stupid

[ikcelaks]

Tonight during the fourth quarter of the JV basketball game, I noticed that many of the students had suddenly become very upset.  I asked someone I knew who's child was a student about what had happened.  His daughter (who seemed worried but calm) told us that "there was a car wreck involving [a student]'s car, and the driver was gone".  Perhaps we were being particularly dense, but both of us assumed that "gone" meant missing, and we further speculated that he may have been drunk and slid off the road, so they were hiding to sober up, which is why he was "gone" and no one seemed to know where he was.  But, of course,  he wasn't "gone".  He was dead.  And it wasn't a slide-off into a ditch like you come to assume this time of year.  It was a devastating head-on collision with another vehicle (non-life threatening injuries there, thankfully, especially since I've know that driver my whole life).  And, oh yeah, there was another kid in the car, and he's not dead, but he soon will be.  And now you get to feel guilty about speculating that a kid was drunk and hiding from the police when he was actually simply dead.

Euphemisms are frustrating, because they're worse than useless.  In the best case, the listener immediately makes the right interpretation, and you might as well of just said it straight.  Otherwise, the listener still feels the full brunt of the news, but it's preceded by an uncomfortable and completely unnecessary state of confusion.

I think I sound bitter, which isn't quite right.  The whole thing is sad and a bit scary (if I had been the person the kid had spun out infront of, I'd likely be dead), but the communication break-down itself is almost humorous in a morbid sort of way.  Humans are silly creatures.