A Comparison of Boise's Explanation of Contingency to How I Met Your Mother's "Slap Bet"

  Boise's assertions over contingencies seemed rather extreme at first, particularly writing a check and giving it to a third party. I am not sure I could stomach a contingency that great. This reading actually reminded me of something an old roommate of mine showed me on the show How I Met Your Mother. It was called the "Slap Bet," though we used a slightly altered version of it. Basically, in the show, two people make a bet and the winner of the bet gets to slap the loser. For our purposes, we created a written contract listing a reasonable amount of homework and housework that I needed to complete in order to prevent being slapped. It was signed by both me and my roommate and taped to the wall, where it remained for a weekend, taunting me to complete everything for fear of being slapped. For me, that is how I view the concept of contingencies: as a scare tactic. I completely agree that they work in the short term, but if you constantly lived in fear of being slapped, or having your money given to something you hate, the contingencies become less important and undermine, rather than encourage, good writing habits. In our case, the slap bet was used only due to the disastrous state of our apartment and the overwhelming amount of homework that needed to be completed.