Shit Hits the Fan

I knew that yesterday was going to be busy. The first day of a new semester is busy, but this year was especially busy. In the morning we had a introductory ceremony for the new director and supervisor. Then we had an opening ceremony for the new teacher trainees before students came at 9:50. Considering that this is the first time having students here since the start of the pandemic AND the first time we are using our recently renovated English Experience Center, the stress level was high. Well, on August 31^st, the night before, I was out for a walk with a friend. I was getting messages during our walk but didn’t check them until later. When I opened the messages, I realized that shit had hit the fan.

When the shit hits the fan, it is a complete disaster. Everything goes wrong. It is a metaphor for when a bad situation becomes a horrible situation. Shit is often used to describe a bad situation (shit show, shitstorm, shit happens). Shit hitting the fan is an allusion for poop actually hitting an electric fan. As you can imagine, poop is messy, but if it hits the fan it's going to go everywhere. I hope I am never in a situation where shit has literally hits the fan.

Example: In early 2020, a lot of people were getting sick from Covid-19. In March, the shit really hit the fan.

There are more polite versions of the metaphor, including “stuff hits the fan”, “the soup hits the fan”, “the egg hits the fan”, “the garbage hits the fan”, “Shinto hit the fan”, and “the pie hits the fan”.

The shit hits the fan likely originates from the 1930s, thought its exact origins are uncertain. It may have arisen from Canadian military slang. However, it doesn’t show up in print until 1943. William Daniel Jones (an American ex-gangster) wrote a novel called Gyrene. In it, he uses the phrase, “Having been there when the shit hit the fan.” It is also possible that it came from an old joke. The joke goes like this:

“A man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn’t find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what happened, the bartender replied, “Where were you when the shit hit the fan?” (jstor Daily)

Getting back to my story, the messages I received were from coworkers. Three of my colleagues were exposed to a confirmed covid patient. They had to get tested the next day (September 1). This meant that they would not be coming to our camps. This created problems because the camp is designed to have a certain number of teachers. Since we have never done this camp before, this really made things difficult. So, in addition to all the other things we had to do on September 1, we also had an emergency meeting to figure out what we were going to do. We had to take teachers from other programs and change our lesson plans. But as most teachers will tell you, flexibility is an essential part of teaching.

Shit Hits the Fan

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