The new honesty

I won't admit when I'm drunk. Come on, you won't either, will you? You never say, "Yes, thank you for asking. I'm off my ass." You might admit you're "a little tipsy," or you might go so far as to describe yourself--as someone in my family does--as "a wee bit merry," but that's it.

I understand why Americans do this--we still retain a hard-wired conflict between pleasure and truth--but I don't think it's unique to us. I know a lot of British people, and they never admit being drunk either. My friend Mark said only frat boys admit to being wasted, and I think that's probably true. Well, you know what? I like frat guys. You always know where you stand with them, and that's partly because they're so honest about things such as drunkeness. From now on, whenever I'm drunk, I'm going to admit it. Please join me in my Truthful Tipler campaign (exceptions should obviously be made if your partner's asking you why in the hell you drove home in this condition--then you get to default to "I only had TWO"), and let us sleep off the shame! There's nothing wrong with being drunk if you've had a bunch of drinks!