119. You Betcha!

When you are in a confined space and just three feet away from someone, conversations are varied and occasionally, perhaps, a little abstruse.  Caroline and I had to make a fairly long car journey last week.

We had a disagreement.  It’s not important now what it was about but Caroline was so certain that she was right, that she wanted to bet me a hundred pounds that she was right.

“OK,” I said, “a hundred pounds it is.”

Then I had a thought.  “What about the twenty million pounds I won when you bet me that John Lewis would be open and I said it wouldn’t be and it turned out that it wasn’t and so we had a wasted journey?  You haven’t paid me yet.”

“Ten million,” she said.  “The bet was ten million.  You know I haven't got twenty million pounds.”

“So when am I getting it?”

“Soon,” she said, “I’ve just got to sort some things out.”

I didn’t say anything but I have serious doubts that she can really afford to pay me even the ten million pounds she owes me. 

The problem I have with making bets with Caroline is that when I win, the money that she pays me comes out of our joint bank account.  I know that if I do win the bet we agreed in the car the other day, and she does pay me the hundred pounds, I will see a cash withdrawal on our current account statement. 

It won’t be for exactly a hundred pounds though.   That would be obvious.  She’s too clever for that.

I asked her how could we ever bet each other anything when the one who wins will be paid with their own money.  In other words, the winner doesn’t ever win anything and the loser loses nothing.

“Do you have to win something?” she asked.  “Isn’t the satisfaction of winning good enough for you?”

“No, it certainly isn’t,” I protested.  “The purpose of betting is to win something.  It’s not enough just to win.  You also want the other person to lose.”

“That’s a very jaundiced view,” she said.  “It doesn’t reflect very well on your character.”

“You’ve never experienced it,” I said, “but there’s something peculiarly satisfying about walking up to the counter in a betting shop and walking away with their money, even if it’s only a couple of quid.”

“So it will give you real pleasure for me to lose, will it?”

“Well, I suppose it will but it doesn’t have to come to that.  Just accept that I’m right and then we won’t need to bet and neither of us will lose anything.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said.  “I know you’re wrong.”

“In that case, what can either of us wager that makes a bet meaningful?” I asked.

“What’s the difference between a bet and a wager?” asked Caroline.

“That’s a good question.  I don’t really know,” I said.

It is a good question and so here’s an attempt at an answer:

I’ve looked at a number of dictionaries and most of them state that ‘wager’ is a synonym of ‘bet’.  I’m not sure that it is in all cases.  I think the difference is found in the sentence I wrote above: “In that case, what can either of us wager that makes a bet meaningful?”

In that sentence, ‘bet’ is the word that describes the contract that is agreed and ‘wager’ is the amount staked in that contract.

I met a “professional” chess player called ‘Spider’ in Washington Square Park in New York last year.  Spider only seemed to have three teeth and was, so he told me, a reformed ex con who now made his living by playing chess.  “How much do your opponents bet on a game?” I asked him. 

“We never bet,” he said, haughtily.  “My opponent decides the amount and places a wager that he will win.  There’s no betting allowed here.”

Since then, Spider has become my 8 year-old nephew’s chess tutor.  Every Saturday morning, Timo goes to the park and places $5 on the chessboard.  That wager is, in fact, a tuition fee as for the next hour Spider teaches Timo as he beats him a few times.

‘Bet’ and ‘Wager’ are hardly synonyms are they?  No one would ever say, “You wager I’ll be going.”  What they’d say is, “You bet I’ll be going.” 

Now, back to our disagreement:

“How about putting the bins out?” Caroline suggested.  “Whoever loses the bet will have to put the bins out every week for a month – or two,” she added after a pause.

“That’s a big bet.   That’s about the equivalent of about a hundred pounds.”

“If you’re so sure that you’re right, that shouldn’t be a problem,” she countered, rather smugly, I thought.

“What about emptying the dishwasher?” I asked.  “It’s mundane and tedious.”

“If putting out the bins for two months is worth a hundred pounds,” Caroline asked me, “what do you reckon emptying the dishwasher is worth.”

Trying to assign a value to routine household chores is quite an exercise and it kept us occupied as we drove on the A47 over the featureless marshland between Great Yarmouth and Acle and later for several miles, south on the A11.

We decided that a points system would be used and that the values are,

Preparing food and cooking	8
Cleaning, dusting, hovering etc.	8
Ironing	7
Laundry, drying, sorting, putting away	6
Supermarket shopping	5
Mowing the lawn	5
Putting out the bins	4
Getting in logs or coal for the fire	3
Changing the bedding	2
Emptying the dishwasher	2
Locking up at night	1

Incidentally, when we first lived together, Caroline and I had a loose, informal arrangement that as a general rule, I would do all the shopping and cooking, while she would do all the cleaning and ironing. 

For a year or so that practice worked very well and then Caroline hired a weekly cleaner…. who also did the ironing! Delegation and outsourcing are professional skills that Caroline uses every day of her working life.

Once the points had been allocated, we agreed that if I win the bet, Caroline would be putting the bins out for the next three Wednesdays but if she wins, I will be emptying the dishwasher for a fortnight.

I think I’m going to buy some disposable paper plates and cups - just in case! 

Hee hee.