The other night, I went to a “game night” at a friend’s apartment.

We had dinner, and then we played “games”.

And I put quotes around “games” because we played Cards Against Humanity.

If you don’t know what it is, its a card game where one person draws a card with a question and shows it to the group. The rest of the players submit a card from their hand with a noun or gerund to answer that question. Then the “judge” reads the cards out loud and determines which card wins.

The cards are usually very vulgar and can be shockingly funny.

As long as you can read at above a 3rd grade level and you know what a “queef” is, you’re in prime position to win.

Which is why I was bothered when the hosts of this game night kept talking about their friend, and how good he would be at this game.

“He’s hilarious, this is such his humor, he would be great at this game.”

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even imagine what he’d put down for some of these.”

Uh.. I can imagine exactly what he’d put down, because there are only so many cards in the deck. And as far as I’m concerned, you can’t be good at this game, because you are constrained to the cards you draw.

If you end up with “the pope”, “a PowerPoint presentation” and “the glass ceiling” in your hand, you have no chance against the guy who drew the “a cat video so cute that your eyes roll back and your spine slides out your anus” card.

It doesn’t matter what the question is, the anus card is simply better. As the judge, it’s not even really comparable; it’s not Apples to Apples. (haha)

The other thing I don’t really like about the game is when the judge reads all the cards out loud and everyone has to laugh at every single one of them, or its rude. You HAVE to. It doesn’t matter how bad the cards are. At least a chuckle. Its courtesy.

After an hour or two, my fake laugh was tiring me out. So I went into the kitchen to get some water and try think through how I could begin to lay the groundwork for my excuse to leave.

While in the kitchen, I noticed a cutting board sitting out on the counter in the shape of Tennessee – where my buddy’s girlfriend was from.

I’ve seen these before – the state shaped cutting boards, and its a great idea if your state is shaped adequately to cut on. Tennessee is very long and skinny, so I was a bit concerned about the practicality of actually cutting on it.

She came into the kitchen and saw me examining it.

“You like the cutting board? I got it as a Christmas present this year,” she said proudly.

“Yeah its cool. And I see you have Wyoming and Colorado as well?” I asked and I gestured towards the 2 rectangular cutting boards propped up in their rack.

“Oh no, those are just regular cutting boards,” she said.

“Oh, right.”

She didn’t get the joke.

The same girl who just spent the last 15 minutes laughing at the Cards Against Humanity card: “2 midgets shitting in a box.”

That’s fine. Not everyone is adept to cutting board geography jokes, whereas the humor in 2 midgets shitting in a box is pretty universal.

But it got me thinking- what states would make the best shape for a cutting board?

So I used one of those “Tier Maker” things to arrange the state shapes into the appropriate tiers for how well they’d operate as a cutting board.

Shape was the biggest factor in making these decisions, but size played a part as well. Because no one would recognize a Connecticut cutting board if its the exact same size as the Pennsylvania cutting board.

In my mind, the Rhode Island cutting board is so small, you can only really cut like a single grape at a time, which lands it in the “poor” category.

The last tier, “horrendous”, is reserved for cutting board shapes that are unusable.

First and most obviously, is Hawaii.

It would be a pack of 15 tiny unusable cutting boards, and perhaps the worst gift you could get your Hawaiian friends.

It could make a great gift for a family of Hawaiian squirrels though.

Then Massachusetts.

You could make the argument that it belongs in “Poor” tier and not “Horrendous”, but they’ve got the Patriots, the Celtics, the Red Sox and the Bruins all competing for championships every year, so I felt like they should experience being ‘horrendous’ in some metric- even if its the shape of their state for a cutting board. Take that Massachusetts.

Last is Maryland. Maryland is the worst shaped state in the US. Not just for a cutting board, its a terrible shape in general.

It’s hard to even describe the shape, its that bad.

It’s like if you gave a 6 year old a crayon and told them to draw a T-Rex using their left hand and with their eyes closed.

The 6 year old artist was named Mary. When her drawing was discovered by Congress, they loved the shape and only had to tweak it slightly to fit the exact actual coastline. They asked her permission to use her shape to create the state boundaries.

She agreed under one condition: the state would be named after her. Congress agreed. And “Mary Land” was officially founded.

These thoughts ran through my mind for the rest of the game night, and I found myself unable to focus on anything else, as I imagined trying to cut up food on each state.

It didn’t matter though because we were playing Cards Against Humanity.

All I had to do was pick the most disgusting card in my hand and play it. Even if it makes no sense, the vulgarity will carry you through to win a most of the time. And at the very worst, it’ll get a fake laugh.