This is a picture of chicken stuffed shells. But this is not a post about chicken stuffed shells. This is a post about a word.

Stuffed.

A word that truly says it all. A word that expertly toes that imaginary line (on which I live) between food and the proverbial "hibbidy dibbidy". A word that could mean just about anything to anybody depending on context, intonation, and number of childhood years the listener has spent eating paint chips. (And just to be clear, by "hibbidy dibbidy," I mean fucking.)

Let's take a closer look inside the usage of the seemingly innocuous "stuffed":

The scene is Christmas dinner inside the sprawling, prewar estate of Mary and Carter Thurston of Greenwich, Connecticut. The couple's nubile, ready-to-rebel, vaguely-bisexual daughter, Muffy, has just brought home her first college boyfriend, Jake. Jake seems eager to make a good impression on his upper-crust hosts, and doesn't appear to despise them at all for their sense of entitlement and thinly-veiled anti-semitism. The four have just finished dinner and the Thurston's modern-day house slave is clearing the table. Mary offhandedly asks Jake if "his people" ever eat steak, when he deftly deflects the latent racism with some apparent flattery.

"Mary, that filet was a revelation." "I dare say, I'm stuffed," guffawed Jake, seemingly eager to please his girlfriend's tight-assed, Anglo-Saxon parents. The so-white-they're-clear Thurstons were overcome with delight. They were proud of their daughter for seeing past religion and socioeconomic class and horns and for bringing home the one Jew without the hook nose that could easily be snuck into their monthly regatta.

What the Thurstons didn't get, however, is crucial. The meaning of the word, "stuffed". Jake is using "stuffed" not in the satisfaction sense, but in the uncomfortable, sexual sense. You see, Jake had not actually ingested a single morsel of steak. But rather, had inserted all 12 medium-rare ounces straight into his ass, then back out, then unceremoniously fed them to the family's prized Yorkshire Terrier, Princess.

Had the Thurston's realized this was Muffy's sinister plot all along, or noticed Jake's overblown, pompous guffaw, or, alas, had known the different meanings of the word "stuffed," the 12-pound, 4-time blue-ribbon winning Yorkie would still be alive today.

So, let this be a lesson to you. Next time you hear someone tell you they're stuffed, be very wary. Tread lightly. And for Christ's sake, hide your dog.