Coprophagia

My people (Cubans) have an idiom I am quite fond of using. It’s as versatile and satisfying to use as the word ‘fuck’ is in English. This idiom is “comiendo mierda” (and its many variations). The phrase directly translates to “eating shit”. It’s one of those things that makes more sense colloquially to Spanish-speakers than it does when you try to translate it. I have not tried to trace the etymology of the phrase because I’m a bit of a come mierda myself, but I do know that this saying is ubiquitous among Cubans. In fact, and don’t check me on this, but I am almost 100% sure that your Cuban citizenship can actually be revoked if you don’t use this phrase at least once a day.

I don’t entirely know how and why it became so widely used, but I think it’s due to the sheer number of settings you can use it in. I know that saying that someone is “eating shit” sounds like something that would only make sense under a very specific and disturbing set of circumstances, but in the context of the Cuban culture, it facilitates speech by encapsulating such a broad range of emotional and mental states that if I removed it from my vocabulary, it would cripple my ability to communicate. Seriously, you can use this phrase for just about any scenario you can imagine. My Spanish is pretty good, but I have lived over half my life in the United States and I use English substantially more than Spanish. As my ability to speak Spanish slowly begins to atrophy, I start to need crutches, and ‘comiendo mierda’ is an ideal linguistic crutch. Let me give you some examples:

Say you have one of those lazy Sunday afternoons in which you are just lounging at home not doing anything substantial or of note. Then a friend calls you and asks what you are up to.

“Just laying on couch comiendo mierda”

To an untrained ear, that just sounds like someone making a poor dietary decision. But to a Cuban, you just communicated a set of complex ideas. What the Cuban hears when you tell them you’re just comiendo mierda is: “I am not doing anything particularly interesting, rather, I am being self-indulgent and lazy, using my time to watch movies and vegetate instead of doing something of value that would push me further down the path of self-improvement.”

All that in just two words. Now that is efficient.

Say you are driving home from work and some asshole cuts you off on the highway. Now you can take that phrase on one of two routes.

1. “This fucking come mierda just cut me off!”

In this example, we turned the phrase into noun in order to deride or insult the aforementioned asshole by imagining that he is someone who chooses to eat feces instead of some other, more palatable repast. Alternatively, you can go with:

2. “Este tipo esta comiendo mierda!” or in English (mostly), “This dude is comiendo mierda!”

Here we see the phrase used as a verb. As in, the forenamed asshole was distracted because he was enjoying a bowl full of feces, and therefore lacked the common decency to not cut you off in the middle of heavy traffic.

Procrastinating at work?

“Comiendo mierda.”

Boss is being a dick?

“Come mierda.”

Boyfriend made a sweet and unexpected gesture but you want to play coy?

With a sly smile, “You’re such a come mierda.”

You hit send on an email you hadn’t finished typing?

“Comiendo mierda.”

More examples no one asked for?

Cool.

Someone makes a bad pun in the middle of a totally normal conversation? Example –

Bob:    “Hi Jim! I didn’t get to catch the basketball game last night, how’d it go?”

Jim:      “You missed out Bob, that game was a real SLAM DUNK!”

Both:   “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHggghhkkkssshhhhcckkkhhhghh….”

In this example, Bob asks Jim a simple question, and Jim, because he’s a come mierda, decides to make a pun instead of behaving like normal human who doesn’t suck; they then laugh hysterically and die choking on their coffee.

This example shows the phrase used as a noun in order to describe a certain type of individual who would use the small platform of a water-cooler conversation as a stage to showcase their excellent humor through the use of a low-effort pun. That type of individual is a come mierda.

This thing is like lyrical duct tape, it works on anything.

Speaking of come mierdas (noun, plural: shit-eaters in this context), I personally prefer to use the phrase in its noun form. Specifically, I use it to refer to people who are overly worrisome, cautious, or anxious about things that are innocuous. The type of person who drinks exclusively bottled water at restaurants for example; or the type to bring their own towels or sheets when they stay at a hotel. This particular type of come mierda is most common among the white-mother demographic. I base this on diligent and thorough research that I totally did.

But I digress.

My intention here is not to be vaguely, or, how my white wife would put it, ‘totally’ racist. My goal is to educate my vast three-person audience about an important cultural touchstone. Hopefully someone learned something new. So next time you meet a Cuban in the wild and you wish to bond with them before capturing them inside your pokéball, all you have to do is find the silliest-looking person in the crowd, point at them and say: “Look at that come mierda.”