My Son's Favorite Word is "Bullshit"

 

My son’s favorite word is “Bullshit”. He hasn’t come out and actually told me that. But as a parent who spends a lot of time around my son and can answer with confidence that his favorite food is chicken tenders and his favorite sports are baseball and basketball, I have just as much confidence saying that his favorite word is bullshit.

Now, this has been building for a while. It’s not like he just woke up one day and thought, “Bullshit. I like it. I think I’ll go with that.” 

I will admit, up until recently I thought his obsession was more of an exploratory curiosity that a lot of kids are struck with around the age of 14. You know, cursing, testing it out. Seeing how much he can get away with. However, I’m quite sure we’ve moved on from that. And these days, I have no doubt that bullshit is indeed my son’s favorite word.

And let’s be honest. It’s a great word. In fact, it’s such a great word, that in 2005, a philosopher by the name of Harry G. Frankfurt published a book called “On Bullshit”. And by the way, that is his real name — Harry Frankfurt — that’s not bullshit. But Frankfurt’s book was originally written as an essay in 1986 that set out to define bullshit as speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. Let’s face it, everyone knows someone who spews a lot of bullshit.

And I’ve flipped through the book. It may surprise you but there's a copy at my parent’s house, and those of you who know my dad know that type of literature is right in his wheelhouse, right up there with books on social justice and biographies by David McCullough (he’s actually my dad’s brother. I’m just kidding, that’s bullshit). 

Now, I’m not sure if my son has actually found and read the book while visiting his grandparents, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has. As a young person, discovering a book like that can be quite thrilling. In fact, it reminds me of the time when I was about 11 years old, browsing the book shelf in our living room, and I came across a collection of not-quite-G-Rated limericks. I opened the book and was introduced to a world of some powerful poetry that took me on many wild adventures, including one about a man from Nantucket, another about two ladies from Birmingham, and of course, my favorite that I still remember to this day more than 35 years later:

There once was a man named McFee

Who was stung in the balls by a bee

He made oodles of money

By making pure honey

Every time he attempted to pee

That’s more than I remember from “The Gettysburg Address” that I had to memorize as a sophomore in high school.

Maybe my son’s infatuation with the word is because we recently watched the summer classic, “On Golden Pond” and he may have been struck by the great exchange between an aging Norman Thayer Jr. (Henry Fonda) and the young Billy Ray (Doug McKeon), as I was the first time I saw the movie as a child.

Norman: “You like that word, don’t you. ‘Bullshit’.”

Billy Ray: “Yeah”

Norman: (nodding in approval) “It’s a good word.”

But while the purpose of Frankfurt’s essay was to define what qualifies as bullshit, my son does not bullshit people. No. He gets much greater enjoyment in calling out bullshit, which would fall in line with Norman and Billy Ray’s use of the word.

The mere fact that a philosopher who taught at Princeton and Yale published a book about bullshit, and Norman Thayer Jr. is also a fan of the word, gives quite a bit of merit to his choice of favorite word.

My son didn’t launch immediately into yelling out “Bullshit!”. It was more gradual. He tested the waters for a bit by occasionally saying, “ah, that’s B.S.” when he’d hear something he disagreed with. When given a look, more of surprise than disapproval, he’d clarify his meaning, “Bologna Sandwich,” to avoid any discipline. 

What seemed like a harmless remark at first, surely ended up being the gateway to un-censored cursing. 

As his comfort level has risen, I’ve been impressed with how quickly he can spot something that he deems to be bullshit, or question whether or not something is bullshit. 

Some days I’m actually jealous at how deftly he can weave the word bullshit into just about any conversation. His daily routines and responsibilities tend to be riddled with bullshit.

School has been an incredible source of bullshit. In fact, I was surprised when he described to me how much bullshit there is at school for an incoming freshman compared to when I was that age.

Homework is bullshit.

This class is bullshit.

This teacher gives us a lot of bullshit.

Which is all very amusing because back in the spring, when he was not able to attend school in-person due to COVID-19: 

The pandemic was bullshit.

Remote learning was bullshit.

The grading system was bullshit.

There’s also lots of bullshit at dinner time.

Out of ketchup? That’s bullshit.

Not the kind of chicken he likes? What kind of bullshit is this?

Sometimes the entire meal will be described as bullshit, even though we basically rotate between five or six meals each week to keep it simple, and the last time we had whatever bullshit meal he’s complaining about, there wasn’t an ounce of bullshit called out.

Even his leisure activities are wrought with bullshit.

Shooting hoops and the ball doesn’t go in? That’s bullshit.

X Box won’t load fast enough? Total bullshit.

His delivery of the word is an art he’s been practicing for some time. Currently, he’s putting the emphasis on the BULL, while really “shlerrshing” up the “shhhhit” part, as if he’s got a mega-Gobstopper tucked inside his right cheek. It’s very authoritative. In fact, sometimes I too, am convinced without doubt that whatever has crawled up his crapper, is indeed bullshit.

Some days I hear him pass through the living room, sounding like he’s having a conversation with someone, but it turns out he is just announcing a fictitious scenario as being bullshit to no one in particular. He is merely fine-tuning his delivery.

In his more playful moods, bullshit becomes “Bullshit-a-Rooni”. 

If he’s outside, within earshot of neighbors, he’ll try to conceal the pronunciation with “Bow-shet”, a favorite during basketball, as if that really hides anything.

When he’s beyond frustrated, he’ll doubledown and toss out, “This is B.S.! It’s frickin’ Bullshit!”. As if he reverted back to his younger self, but in a moment of clarity, realized he was way past the acronym of “B.S.”, and goes right to his trusted “bullshit” punctuated with a play on the “F” word, which I have no doubt is not far behind.

While calling bullshit, is in itself bullshit, the believability, or proof that there really is bullshit in a situation, is based mostly on the authority with which “bullshit!” is called. I think my son subscribes to this belief. And it is a good life skill, I’ve decided.

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