February 12, 2012
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Recognizing B.S.
I can tell Bull Shit from a mile away. Not because I spent my first few years on a farm around livestock which included bulls. Frankly shit smells the same no matter what specie of animal it is deposited from, even from man. The difference is from man it is squirted from the mouth or the pen or the computer. We read it here on Xanga all the time.
I was taught that when I bragged about myself, I was spewing B.S. My parents despised braggarts.
1. Thou shalt not brag. If thou brags, thou art spewing Bull Shit.You see their logic was if I did things well, then it would diminish my accomplishment by allowing others to know about it. They might think I was good at something. And we can have none of that. Some logic huh? That was Commandment #1. To this day I have trouble putting together my accomplishments that I have had through the year for my performance review at work. I guess I’m just not Texan or Canadian enough to brag about myself easily. I work for both.
Never did figure out how many Commandments our family had because as I grew and acquired more knowledge, new Commandments were written to cover any deficiencies. They were living documents you might say. An other was :
2. Thou shall not mention sex in any form, if thou speaks of sex, thou art spewing Bull.Shit.
If asked about your sex life, your answer should be ”I was taught as a gentlemen to never speak publicly concerning matters of the heart.” Of course at my young age, my matters of the heart consisted of only a few private moments alone in the bathroom, which had to be fast. I had three older sisters and my bathroom time was usually at the bottom of the occupancy schedule. And I was never going to speak publicly about what I was doing in there, I really didn’t need to be reminded of that. I thought I was the only one that had discovered it and I wasn’t going to ruin the fun by telling anyone. Even if I did, I probably would be breaking Commandment #1 also because I certainly would have been bragging. And probably really couldn’t handle the additional guilt.3. Thou shalt not spend time in the pool hall, if you play pool thou art spending time doing Bull.Shit.
The pool hall was a terrible place for me to go. When I went it was always clandestinely. I was never good at pool for two reasons. One, I didn’t get to go to the pool hall that often, it was just too hard sneaking around so no one would see me go in the joint and two, I had to learn to play while keeping my eyes trained to the door, in case my Dad or one of his good friends came in. You can not learn “english” while looking over your shoulder at the front door. That really was B.S. because I really loved playing pool. It wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I learned from one of my dad’s oldest friends that my father was the local pool shark in town when he was in high school. I would have loved to play pool with my dad when I was a kid but we never did. You see, he never bragged about it. It was B.S. you see. I never did understand that Commandment.4. Thou shalt not drive a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler product, they are all Bull Shit. Thou shall drive a Studebaker.
I can remember only one Chevy and one Ford in our family while I was growing up. And they were before I learned to drive. It was all Studebakers through High School. “Hey, lets go to the Prom, the ol’man will let me use the ’58 President this time, I promise, I won’t be picking you up in the pink Lark”. Now that is Bull Shit in anyone’s book. We can have airplanes, speed boats, hunting dogs, fishing boats and shotguns but no Ford, Chevys or Chryslers. Jeez!
Well, I could go on for a long time telling of my family Commandments but frankly I have forgotten most of them. I, like Moses, broke the tablets as soon as I left my father’s house and tried to wash them from my mind. Only for them to emerge after I had my own children. Having learned B.S. so well as a child, I really had no trouble spewing it at my children. And like me, they also learned to recognize Bull Shit when they saw it as well.
What B.S. Commandments did you have growing up? How well do you recognize B.S. ?
E.
Comments (11)
Hmm. I don’t think we had any. My father did have a thing about being out past 6 pm… but that was because he grew up in Chicago and it wasn’t safe outside after 6 pm… Of course we lived in the country and in the summertime the sun didn’t set until after 9 pm! hehe. He finally loosend up on that rule but there was a goodly amount of teeth gnashing.
My parents didn’t have a lot of rules. The only BS rule that comes to mind is that I had to wear a jacket when my MOM said it was cold enough to have to wear one. I can remember sweating sometimes because I wasn’t cold enough to have one on regardless of what the thermostat said. Great post!
@SandraErickson - Thanks for the rec Sandra!
@murisopsis - Wow! six is early in the summer time. But I know a little about Chicago, I can understand how he felt, but man that’s early!
@ItsWhatEyeKnow - Thank you Lena! I can see how in Florida it would be hard to judge. There is something about mothers and “are you warm enough”. My folks were pretty easy going but had a lot of spoken and unspoken beliefs. They worried a lot about appearances and not making an ass out of the family.
Yeah, my fave was that even after I got my license at age 16, I had to park on one side of the two lane highway that went through our little one horse town, and actually WALK ACROSS to the other side because I was not allowed to drive across it!! I guess if I were going to be killed crossing it, it had better be without the family vehicle because Dad sure as heck could not afford another one (unlike daughters, of which he had three). ha!
Fortunately, we didn’t have B.S. commandments in my house. To this day, I am ever so thankful for the fairytale household I grew up in. Now, about those cars…….if I couldn’t drive my Jeep, I’d say, “That’s bullshit!” hee, hee
@sweet_sinceritee - Oh I had some of those limitations too at 16, the city limits, then the county line, I knew all the boundries. But one side or the other of main street he never thought of. lol!
@heart_beep - I’d love to have a Jeep again! Don’t let that thing out of your sight!
@Iamsurrounded - Oh, believe me, its my one possession I covet! I’ll cry my eyes out when it dies. Its a 2001 Jeep Cherokee Sport and it has almost 209,000 miles on it! Yikes!
seems to me like you mention sex in rather no uncertain terms here. you know, in the part where you admonish against it.
wut