I don’t worry about this too much with strangers. As the AB folks know, I tend to lay it out there in this format with relative strangers. But not so much with “relative relatives”.
I recall a conversation on a rainy summer weekend afternoon at the lake with my uncle’s family over to visit. My sisters and cousins were somewhere else, and I was in the living room with my parents, uncle and aunt… mostly bored, and planning to excuse myself to do something… anything… else. I was on summer break between my freshman and sophomore years of college.
The conversation somehow got onto young people smoking, and my aunt (an adorable woman who also adored me), turned to me and asked (because she knew), “Well, you don’t smoke, do you?” ... and I dodged the question and tried to change the subject. Because the truth was that I didn’t “smoke” smoke… but I did have a secret that I wasn’t quite ready to “out” yet.
But she persisted, and this time all of the adults looked at me, like, “Yeah, why not just answer this innocent question?” So I did: “Well, I don’t smoke… cigarettes…”
You could have heard a pin drop. Next door.