The fine art of calling shotgun
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Anyone who has ever taken a ride, no matter the length, in someone else’s car with a third person present knows how vital “calling shotgun” can be. For those of you who have no idea what calling shotgun is (I’m sure there are at least a few of you), it quite simply stakes one’s claim in the front seat of the car. For instance, if more than two people are walking toward a car the first person to yell “shotgun” is awarded the comfort of sitting in the front seat for the trip. In fact, “calling shotgun” has become so widespread in today’s young life, that there is not a trip that I can remember where it has not been a deciding factor in the arrangement of the sitters.Despite its prevalence, the rules of shotgun vary considerably between states and even regions of the country. And even people from the same part of town disagree on what the rules are, which invariably leads to conflict.
For this reason, numerous people have tried to decide upon the rules once and for all. Even Yahoo Answers has addressed the question. Shotgun Rules offers a reasonable set of rules and sells pocket shotgun guides for $5.95. I, however, prefer Shotgun Guide as it is more comprehensive and covers almost every possible situation. So kids (and even adults), make it a goal to print out one of these guides and put it in your car for reference. Who knows the next time that you’ll need to prove to a fellow rider that calling “blitz” is only valid if the driver verifies the call as outlined in Section 1.3 of the rules?
posted by Michael Kramarz @ 1:55 AM |
2 Comments:
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At 12:22 PM,
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I cant believ there's a guid for calling shotgun. Someone's actually making money off of this concept. UE you need to come up with something creative like that.
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At 8:05 AM,
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Nice in depth piece. I usually just give it to the guy who is oldest. That's appropriate in my neck of the woods.
