CALL ME SNAKE

I was at the hardware store, buying pantry moth traps which my kids don’t like because it’s wrong to kill animals. I don’t like them either but we’ve got an infestation and I don’t know what else to do. I purchased the item and the cashier, a young Asian woman I hadn’t seen before, asked me what “sugar-coat” meant. At first, I didn’t know what she was getting at. But then I saw she had written down a list of English (or American) colloquialisms and was trying to advance her command of the language while on the job. I defined the term as best I could without trying to sugar-coat it in any way.