Bullshit and all of its variants

"I've been sick of bullshit for awhile. And there's nothing worse than when it's coming out of my own mouth."

This line was one of mine, from a conversation with my close friend Bob. His response was "Wow, I don't know if that could be said any better," and I immediately realized that I had just written an excellent and very true quote, and by complete accident at that.

The immediate reference was to dating around, which I consider to be one of the sad necessities of finding a companion. "Sad" because it more often than not results in bullshit coming from at least one of the parties involved, sometimes both. Most of the time it's only "birdshit," which I define as mild bullshit, but it can easily grow to the point where full lies are being told, which, pardon my repetition, is BULL-SHIT.

To use examples:

"Birdshit" would be talking to a girl and telling her that you used to work at a radio station when you in fact only worked for your college radio. Basically, stretching the truth to make you out as a cooler person than you actually are. It still isn't very nice or honest, but it doesn't feel as bad - which unfortunately means that you can very often let your birdshit pile up into something unmanagable. A giant mound of birdshit is pretty hard to deal with, whether you're the one who created it or the one who has to swallow it.

"Bullshit" I would define as the really bad stuff - lies. For example, telling a girl that you really like her when in fact you have very little interest in her. There are many reasons that people tell bullshit, from honorable ones (i.e. not wanting to hurt said girl, and playing along with her emotions to make things easier for her) to selfish and hurtful ones (i.e. just wanting to get in her pants, which sadly is the more common variant). But whatever your justification, bullshit is never worth it. While birdshit is not good either, it's relatively easy to hose off - bullshit, on the other hand, is a huge hassle to clean and usually just grows larger and smellier the longer you leave it there.

I must admit, I have been on both sides of these situations. While I have been bullshitted and birdshitted by various girls, I have unfortunately done my share of it myself. I am not proud of this, and this is the reason I am somewhat ambivalent towards the whole dating scene. I expect to be told some lies in my life, but I really feel like a hypocrite hearing myself tell them - and yet, the honesty approach is something which is very difficult to apply when just getting to know someone. But as in most cases, the difficult approach is most often the right one to take. B-shits of both types are crutches, which we need because truth can hurt the person telling it as much as it hurts the person it is told to. Some people can live with using these crutches, and yes there is a temptation for me to use them too. But at the end of a date, I tend to feel a lot better knowing I got through it on nothing but my own two legs.

Sorry for all of the metaphor. I realize that, aside from just being a tad pretentious, it creates mental images of people walking around on crutches made out of animal shit. Again, my apologies.