Bear

[webofevil]

In a shop on the way to work yesterday there were two teenage bhangramuffins. One was over-excited; harmless, but jabbering loudly to his mate about something that had happened to him on a bus, almost yelling in glee. “Cut it out, man,” interrupted the other one, embarrassed. “Shit, we’re in a shop now. What j’wanna get?”

His friend a put a lid on it for a while, but couldn’t contain himself for long. Soon he was back up to much the same volume, but this time talking about a £1,000 watch he’d broken and was having to pay £50 to get mended so that his stepdad didn’t kill him. Normally, apparently, this watch is kept in a safe. “J’see inside the safe?” asked the quiet one. “Yeah, man!” said the unquiet one, and I swear as I left the shop I heard him say this: “A bear could shit in it!” Does this mean it’s spacious, or actually quite small? Or is that probably not what I heard?

Comments

[strictlytrue.livejournal.com]

and I swear as I left the shop I heard him say this: “A bear could sh1t in it!”

So he's saying that the safe is in fact a portal to a magical woodland of some sort?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

That’ll be it.

[lifesizemonkey.livejournal.com]

I have never heard that expression but i would guess he was bigging up the safe.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Well, bears are notoriously bad for buying a house and building it out to include three bathrooms--and it's always the case that one is "too big," one is "too small," and one is "just right." What he was saying was probably that it was a moderately-sized safe, suitable not only for bears but also for any young blonde human visitors.

[(Anonymous)]

Is the polite alternative that the pope could be catholic in it?

[(Anonymous)]

Or is it in fact made of wood? The flimsy construction could be a clue to how he got the watch out.

[uniquefergus.livejournal.com]

(In a Frank Muir voice) All good answers but wrong...the young man is referencing the fact that the popular phrase 'does the bear sh1t in the woods?' actually refers to a well known safe, manufactured in the US in the earlier part of last century. The 'Woods' was standard issue to all Wells Fargo offices. For many years branches in the North West were robbed by highly organised, urbanised bears, who would as an act of defiance, take a dump in the strong box before leaving, and would...

No, I can't go on. I have no idea what those guys were talking about. A friend of mine once said 'The crows are too far from the corn' at the end of a sentence and we all sat around and nodded at his wisdom, for about a minute, until one of us said 'Eh?'

[amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com]

Surely he said something like "It's bare sh1t."

[g0ldt00th.livejournal.com]

Or "[it had] bare shit in it"

[dukebox.livejournal.com]

"Bear" is slang for "very". Thus:
"A's bear good sh1t in it."
Becomes:
"There's very good things in it."
Which shows that he is indeed talking about a safe in which it is traditional to keep good things.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

The noble Duke is right. I wasn't aware of this, but slang dictionarbies seem to have records of it from at least 2003, maybe 2001. What a rubbish bit of slang it is, not least because it kind of sounds like that really sloaney way of saying "very" where you miss off the "y" and it comes out as "veh".

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Also, dictionaries.