Ryan ChartrandWell, everyone has their way to do it. Some are quicker than others, so in the end really, only one person prevails. Of course, I’m talking about the shotgun. Now, hold on college boy and college girl, because I’m not talking about shotgunning a beer, but rather the ever so important “shotgun” yell to get the rights to the front passenger seat in the car. The rules of shotgun are always debated though, as everyone grew up with their own rules on how this process of car seating arrangements must take place. So, as I do every week, I am going to guide your life in the right direction with proper shotgun rules.
Before we get into the rules, let’s first get some sort of history about this rule. As you, my loyal reader know, my research is extensive1 for these articles. Basically, I Wikipediad 2 the word “shotgun.” In the article, it said that, “Shotguns are normally used to hunt whitetail deer in the thick brush and briars of the South-Eastern and upper Midwestern United States, where, due to the dense cover, ranges tend to be very close – 25 meters or less.”
This, of course, has nothing to do with the car shotgun rules, but I felt that since you go to my guides to life each week for education, putting in that useful tidbit of knowledge will only help your understanding of the world. Well, since Wikipedia didn’t directly have the answer of the history of the game, I’ll use my extensive3 knowledge to tell you what it means. Pretty much, the shotgun is used to shoot animals. Humans are types of animals. And finally, humans have an obsession to sit in the front of cars if they aren’t driving. Voila! We have the name and meaning of the game.
OK, enough with the history, I mean come on, I think it is safe to say that you don’t want to be boggled down by such thorough and academic information like what I gave you in the last paragraph.
The first rule is that every person who will be going in the car must be in attendance. This actually saves that one friend who always takes forever to get ready. Why the protection? Well, there is an extremely humane reason. The people who take the longest to get ready most likely have some self-esteem issues and need as much time as possible to make themselves look as good as possible. Now, if they didn’t have the protection of this rule and were forced to sit in the back of the car every time, this would crush their already depressing life that much more, continuing the spiral of failures in their life. Harsh? Maybe, but sometimes the truth hurts.
The second rule is that the car must be in eyesight. This one is more of a time frame rule than anything else. With this rule, that one jerk of a friend who likes to always call shotgun the instant the group is ready to go can’t do this anymore. With this rule, of course tall people have the advantage over, well, midgets. This is fine though as midgets have good things going for them, such as being able to buy children’s clothes, which are much cheaper than normal people’s clothes4.
Now at this point, you might have already lost position in the car. Fear not though, as you still have a chance to sit shotgun as the passengers in the car have the right to one challenge for the rights to sitting up front. To execute the challenge, there is an easy, yet extremely mind bending and mind boggling game that is played. That game is “Princess, Hunter, Bear.” Sound intimidating? Well, it is, but this whole shotgun thing is a serious issue.
Here’s how it works. The two competitors face opposite directions and secretly choose either princess (makes a kissing face and then curtsy), hunter (put your arms out like you are shooting a gun) and bear (put your arms above your head like a bear would). On the count of three, the two players turn and act out what they choose. Princess beats hunter. Hunter beats bear. Bear beats princess. Best two out of three gets the right to the front seat.
As for the rest of the car, or the “losers” as I’ll call them, the only hope left, without challenge, is the backseat positioning. After “shotgun” is called and the possible challenge was executed, “right nut” and “left nut” can then be called for the last two good seats in the car, leaving that one sorry, sorry friend riding “bitch” in the middle.
1 Typo. By “extensive,” I mean “little to no.”
2 If you can “Google” something you should be able to “Wikipedia” something as well.
3 Read note No. 1.
4 Wow, was that politically incorrect? Sorry. I’ll use the term “little people” instead of “midget.”
Mike Heimowitz is a journalism senior and Mustang Daily humor columnist. See how he calls the shots at mikeheimowitz.com.