High-purr-bowl-ee

There's a phrase that has gained some small amount of popularity regarding mictruation and specific breakfast cereal. The particular words are "Who peed in his Cheerios?", but my attractive and soft spoken wife likes to up the potty room ante by changing the voiding action to defecation; "Who pooped in his Cheerios?"

I like the common version because it invents a humorous possibility for the antagonist's chagrin,  noting that their sour attitude is disproportional to the situation, yet simultaneously somewhat excusing them for it. It's a wonderful way to quickly communicate the notion that yes, you recognize that you are not the only person that this unpleasant individual has had to deal with today and they likely have a reason to be so openly hostile, but gee whiz, you  weren't the cause of the annoyance, do you really have to be the one to reap the harvest of animosity? That, and it's funny to think of some bloke just unzipping his fly and urinating in a bowl of milk in a provocative demonstration of disregard for social norms, at least, it was for the first dozen and a half times. My wife's version goes a little too far, though. Pee is quite bad enough in my opinion, but turds in the cereal are simply outrageous. Everyone has to suffer a little pee in their heart healthy morning meal, but I really would want to know who it was that pooped in his Cheerios, and see the offender punished. But mostly the reason I don't like my wife's version is because it leaves the speaker with no place to go. Poop. In the Cheerios. Nuclear option dropped (pun absolutely intended) in round one, there is nothing left to say. Hyperbole has struck once again.

Language is a wonderful, exciting thing. In it we have the means to express every feeling in every degree. We don't have to settle for the generic descriptor "happy," we can choose "comfortable," "thrilled," or "orgasmically delirious." Each of these communicate a specific point on the vague range of happiness and this is useful to writers because all we have is words. You can't see the heroine's face to gauge the exact kind of fear on her face, whether it is the "am I going to have to touch that?" face or the "is that thing going to devour my innards and lay eggs right behind my eyeballs?" face. Instead we use words like "squeamish" and "terrified," and the reader gets the picture.

The problem is that all storytellers, whether they are paid professionals or weekend warriors gathered at the water cooler, have a need to over dramatize. Otherwise the listeners are not suitably impressed, which is the entire point of telling a story in the first place. Thus, the temptation is to turn the descriptors up to 11 every time, which is fine if you can pull it off, but afterward you have no place to go. In my military experience I heard "the F word" a lot. This single word can be used to describe the gamut of human emotion, relying on volume, context, prefixes and suffixes, and tone among other things, to communicate the exact version you are attempting to evoke. The problem is when you are in the habit of yelling it at the top of your lungs when you are, say, perturbed. What are you left with when you become upset, or truly angry? I have seen grown men reduced to gibbering, raging idiots because they had no way to communicate their emotion other than to use their stock reaction over and over again.

The only defense against hyperbole is to possess an extensive vocabulary and a conscious effort to use it. I encourage you to build your vocabulary by reading. If you aren't encountering new words when you read, find a smarter book. I promise there are books that are both intelligent and fun, you just need to look for them. If you have a broader vocabulary you open yourself up to better reception and delivery in your communication. You won't regret it, I promise.