A Load of Bull

Age four:

My mom is standing next to me, looking at the electric bill. “That’s a load of bull,” she says.

“Wouldn’t it be a load of bulls?” I wonder to myself. “You can’t have a load of something if it’s only one thing.”

I am still learning the rules of English, but I pride myself in knowing how plurals are normally used. No matter how many bulls she is talking about, I don’t understand why they have anything to do with the electricity. I picture a load of bulls emerging from the back of a truck and proceeding to hop on their own individual treadmills, all working to power our home. I don’t see how we could need more than four bulls, at the most, to power our whole little house. Four bulls doesn’t seem like something to get that upset about. We don’t even have a china cabinet.

Two months later, my mom thinks nothing of it when I say I want to be a bull for Halloween. I still wonder from time to time what that phrase means, but I never bother asking. This way, it can mean whatever I want it to mean. The “real” meaning will eventually come to me anyway, and I am a very patient person.

Age eight:

I get it.

Whenever I see a picture of a bull or hear about one in a story, I think of that phrase I heard years ago. The meaning of the phrase stayed a mystery to me for four years. Now, I finally hear someone use that phrase, but it’s a little more complete than I heard it before. The missing piece has been placed in the puzzle.

Age sixteen:

I pass my driving test on the first try and receive my license in the mail. I get a small stuffed animal bull to put in the window of my very first car. It functions as a reminder of my own personal inside joke; it’s a bit of comic relief for those stressful days. When I drive around with just myself and the bull in the car, I amuse myself by thinking that this is the literal representation of “a load of bull.”

It interests me what words people choose to leave out and what they deem appropriate for others to hear. People make assumptions that whomever they are talking to will understand the meaning of whichever words they choose to utter. When someone asks, “would you like to grab a slice?” it is assumed they mean a slice of pizza. When I say something is in “my room,” I assume that it is understood that I mean my bedroom. Back in the day, when my mother said, “that’s a load of bull,” her reason for omitting one select syllable was twofold. Firstly, she knows the phrase to be generally understood. Secondly, she was omitting what she deemed inappropriate for her child to hear. She chose her words without thinking about the lengthy train of thoughts onto which they would lead me. Is this a bad thing? No. It is just a thing. In fact, it is likely a good thing to leave a little up to interpretation.

Age thirty-two:

I find a small porcelain bull figurine at a thrift store in the basement of a local church, and I snag it for a whopping total of one dollar and fifty cents. I clean it up nicely and place it in a prime location on a shelf in my living room, right off of the dining room. Now, every time I have someone over for dinner and they start spewing exaggerated nonsense, I don’t bother arguing with them or calling them out – that would be a waste of my time. Instead, I casually ask them if they want to see my beautiful porcelain figurine. If they catch on, they catch on, but whether they notice or not, I can, at least, find amusement in my clever acknowledgement of their lies.

An inside joke cannot be more of an inside joke than when you only share it with yourself. Tell me, do you have your very own bull?