Disclaimer: This post is about a game called Shit Happens. I can’t change it, that’s the name. That word is going to get used a lot in this post. If the use of that words offends you I do apologize, but please exit now by clicking here (non-offensive link, I promise).
Being a grown-up is hard. Sometimes you need to take a break and have some fun. But one of the nice things about being a grown-up is that you don’t have to spend all your downtime playing Candyland or Chutes and Ladders. As a grown-up, you get to play games like Shit Happens. No really, that is the name of the game. I’m not just using a turn of phrase about an unfortunate incident. It’s a game and that is the name. And no, I did not make that rhyme on purpose.
So what is Shit Happens? Shit Happens is a card game that asks you to judge the relative shittiness (pun intended) of certain life events. You start out with three shitty event cards in your Lane of Pain. This is where you will build you Scale of Woe (hey, at least it’s not a tree). Each card has a shitty event and a number that shows its shittiness on a scale of 0 to 100 (the misery index). The person next to you pulls a card and tells you what the event is, without telling you what the misery index number is. If you manage to correctly guess the relative shittiness of the card compared to the cards in your lane you win the card and it goes in your Lane of Pain. If not, the person to your left gets to try. First person to gather 10 cards wins. As the number ranges between the cards in you Lane of Pain narrow the game becomes harder.
So what makes this game so much fun? They have gone to great lengths to come up with a lot of strange and truly terrible events. They start with things that are just kind of bad like having a co-worker steal your lunch (7) or having all the shows on your DVR erased (8.5). Then there are the moderately rotten events like waking up hungover with a tattoo of Whoopi Goldberg on your butt (38.5) or watching an “adult” video with your parents (44.5). Next come the really rotten events like watching an “adult” video of your parents with your parents (56-really? Only 56?) or being added to the No-Fly list (65.5). Next come the REALLY terrible things like incurable hiccups (88) or having a ketchup bottle stuck up your…ummm, place it shouldn’t be. You know what, I’m going to have to stop there. Let’s just say the misery index on that one is 80.5. And they go all the way to 100, so as you can imagine, there are some really messed up things on some of these cards, just like real life.
