If I understand correctly Crabbdean you want to add a state to your module, just one extra hash key that acts as a flag. You might turn this on and off in an instance with

$thisthing->verboseon;
some more code needing verbosity
$thisthing->verboseoff;
[download]

The push would be internally short circuited to a nop where the verbose flag is not on. Or am I missing your point?