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No one ever said the word
in the house. We never said
damn or hell or bastard or
son-of-a-bitch or fuck or asshole
or cocksucker or goddamn or
any of the other forbidden words
that were the common language
of the barn on risk of absolute
and total excommunication
from family. Manure? Manure
was an alien concept, as alien
as the word urine. We all said
shit or piss in the house, as in
my six year old brother's comment
when confronted with his first
artichoke: "What the shit is this
shit," and my mother's response:
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"Piss on you if you don't try it."
I hasten to mention, lest you think
my family barbaric, that compound
words of shit and piss were forbidden.
If you said bullshit or cowshit, you'd get
cuffed alongside the head, and if you ever
said obscene words like pigshit or horsepiss
or called someone a chickenshit, you'd get
really clocked - even my sisters were not
immune from this linguistic hairsplitting.
Once, in a wiseass experimental moment,
I told my older sister she was full of
protozoa shit, but even though no one knew
what I was talking about, I got whacked
and sent up to bed without supper.
I suppose this liberality with the words
came about because of the ubiquity of shit
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