How we interpret some words matters to the when or where they are spoken.  So it is with bullshit.

I picked up bullshit just as I left childhood behind.  A gentleman Okie, Wallace, down the road from us had a fairly colorful vocabulary.  A vocabulary that my daddy would never use, but understood well.  The two of them worked, hunted, and talked through hard times.  While my vocabulary gained colorfulness in the years to come, I never really understood their friendship until I understood bullshit.

Bullshit is thought of as a problematic word—perhaps a little more than problematic.  Utilized to describe something as unnecessary, unneeded, stupid, in the way, nonsensical, and untrue, bullshit is often thought of as vulgar.  Over time though, I’ve found that when used by people who know everyday bullshit, the word is rich rather than vulgar.

Bullshit’s true meaning comes through fully experiencing shit.  Feed cows on a cool early spring morning when you’re in a hurry to get to get to town, step into a fresh mound of steaming shit, then jump into the truck, turn the heater on, and have the smell waft through the cab, and vulgar, nonsense or stupid is not what comes to mind.  But you do have an interior reaction that is not saddled up with the word pleasant.  This natural end product of cows eating grass, can be…disagreeable.

Most of the time though, bullshit is something to be enjoyed.  To look across a pasture, watch cattle feed and see steam rising from mounds of bull and cow shit is pleasurable.  The sight is one of a natural reciprocity between cattle and grass.  Grass gives it leaves to be eaten.  Cattle process the grass, grow and have good health.  Then the natural and final result of shit leaves the grass with what it loves equally to water, cowpies full of nitrogen.  This is grass full of good life and feeling rich.  The relationship between grass and shit is not unlike that of my daddy and Wallace.  Their lives enhance the wellbeing of one another.  They are better people because of the other.

When used by those who know natural everyday bullshit, the word is one well used in phrase and deed.  There is no better word when you’ve just stepped in a pile of steaming institutional shit.  No word better to describe how your friends have enriched your life.  Life is good as long as you remember to watch your step and eat more of those summer tomatoes whose roots were gifted with a little bullshit.