“How I Met Your Mother” is one of those shows on Netflix you watch to fill time, laugh a little, overall give you a comedic relief at the end of a long day. But something we don’t realize until only after the show is over; is how many life lessons this show actually has. It teaches us about friendship, perseverance, the importance of story telling, and love.
One life lesson that is a little harder to uncover is the “Slap Bet” between Marshall and Barney. Now I get it, how can the “Slap Bet” be any sort of life lesson? And while watching the first few slaps, there really isn’t any. But during the final season, I started to see it.
Season 9, episode 14, at around 19:31 the song “You Just Got Slapped” is sung while we relive all of Barney’s previous slaps. And the whole time I watched this 1 and half-minute performance, all I could think about was my junior year of college (you should go watch it now).
Junior year has by far been the hardest year of college I have had to overcome. The stress, the responsibilities, the rejection. It all felt like, well, a slap in the face. Junior year is HARD. Never in my life have I felt more self-doubt or resentment about the obstacles that kept being put in front of me. Like a line in the sing says, “You're trying, oh, you're trying not to cry.” And heck, maybe you do cry a little, because junior year just keeps slapping you in the face.
But then towards the end of the comedic song, your perspective changes. You realize that all those “slaps in the face” led you to a really a power year in your life. A year where you discovered just how strong you were, how resilient you are, and how you know you can do things better now. All those “slaps,” they led you HERE.
The song ends with, “'Cause it was awesome, the way that you just got slapped.” So yes, junior year got you a couple times. Maybe more than a couple. But in a way, you are kind of thankful for them. You are thankful for the way they knocked you down because it made you getting back up THAT much more impressive. You’re thankful for the way junior year left your feeling battered and bruised because it made you tough. You’ll be grateful for all the times junior year made you feel small and unimportant because it forced you to self reflect, change, and move on to bigger things.
But most of all, you are thankful that now you can look back at all those junior year “slaps in the face”, and see that you are not going to be pushed around that same way senior year. Senior year, you’re going to be a stronger, more secure, more open, and a more resilient person than you were junior year. The “slap bet” is over, and buddy, you WON.
