All Bulled Up

When I was a kid and didn’t get my way my mother would say that I was “all bulled up.” Of course, in a southern dialect that could have a few different meanings.

In the south if you put an ear of corn on to “bull”, it means that you are boiling it in water. Which an interpretation of being “all bulled up” could mean that if you stuck a fork in me, I was done, because I’d been put in a pressure cooker and boiled.

But what I think mom really meant was, similar to what happens when a bull sees red, I was pawing the earth, nostrils flaring with a low growl emitting in my chest. And I have to say, when she called me on the carpet for being all bulled up, I answered with my teenage hand on my hip and my foot stomping, “No I’m not”. And that was really like a bull seeing red . . . her, not me.

The term took on yet another meaning when Tim and I brought a certain “southern delicacy” to a gathering with our friends. It reminded Karl about his college road trips from Lakewood, Florida to Georgia. He would stop every 50 miles or so at a roadside stand and buy hot, “bulled” peanuts. He would scarf them down so that in another 50 miles down the road he could stop at another stand and buy some more. He would eat so many that he would get a stomachache. His wife said that a few months ago he retraced that road trip and documented it with photos, which he texted to her from each stop.

Today’s gift was to offer our most adventurous friends the “southern delicacy” of boiled peanuts. A few folks actually ate some, but others took one look at their friends’ faces and gracefully declined.

The peanuts were “bulled,” green and mushy. Karl gladly took the remainder home to heat up and eat more later. Hopefully, he won’t get “all bulled up” because now he has his “bulled” peanut fix.

In Giving,

Robin