“Ewe lamb up for discussion,” I read on my nightly doom scroll through Facebook. “What does that even mean?” I thought. This post was from a friend who breeds show lambs and, as I gather, fancy show lambs. While the phrasing was odd, I assumed it basically meant they wanted to sell their lambs but were particular about who they went to. They would “discuss” with you before they agreed to sell. It's a little pretentious, but hey, these are show people. The show lamb equivalent of “to a good home.”
I scrolled into another “up for discussion” post a few weeks later. This time, it was for locker beef. Locker beef up for discussion? What are they going to do? Check your credit score? Inquire how you prefer your steak? “No, ma’am, we can’t sell you this beef. We have a 100 percent track record of customers preferring their steak cooked medium or less. We can’t compromise our reputation.” It’s beef. Dead cow. If I can pay you, what else matters?
To those of you shaking your head, to my defense, I don’t frequent Facebook Marketplace. Years ago, I bought a chicken coop on Craigslist. It was a nightmare. I even wrote a blog about it (you can read it here). Since then, I’ve kept my nose out of the various modern classifieds. My idea of purgatory is fielding messages, arranging meetups and then (the most awful part) negotiating a price. My husband, Craig, sells furniture, old 4-wheelers and other randoms on Facebook Marketplace. He is good at it and doesn’t mind. If I’ve got something to sell, I tell him the price, and he does the rest. It is a marvelous benefit to marriage.
That is why I didn’t know that "up for discussion" was code for “for sale” when trying to hock animals. The uppers at Meta must think that selling animals is akin to other devious types of online selling. If the Facebook folks are reading this, it is livestock. The root of the word – “stock” – literally means "for sale." Give us country folks a break. We aren’t criminals.
After the locker beef post, I still didn’t quite gather what "up for discussion" meant. Then, last night, another friend posted “turkey and pork up for discussion.” This was getting weird. Why is everyone so undecided about selling their livestock? I asked the household expert about such things, telling him I couldn’t determine what everyone planned to discuss with prospective buyers. He laughed for a minute until his eyes started tearing up from merriment.
“Erica,” he said, “I told you years ago I’d stop with the blonde jokes, but this,” he gasped for air, “deserves a revision of that commitment.” I threw a pillow at him.
I wish we could say what we mean.
