Sharing a challenge coin with a group is a time-honored tradition rooted in the nation’s military representing teamwork, unity, and proof of exclusive membership. However, forgetting your own coin can be an expensive affair, potentially costing you a full round of drinks and an evening’s worth of mockery. Before letting that happen, you had best learn the five rules for keeping your challenge coin handy for a “coin check.”

1. Initiating a “coin check” consists of a “challenge” and a “response.” If you are the “challenger,” then you initiate a “coin check” by slamming your challenge coin onto a table or bar. All other coin holders must then “respond” by drawing their coins out and slamming them down as well or otherwise present their own challenge coins for public view.

   1. Another acceptable form of challenge is holding your coin aloft and shouting “coin check” or another verbal form of communicating your intent to challenge.

   2. Depending on the circumstances, it is also acceptable to insistently tap your coin upon a surface or otherwise make it audibly known you are initiating a challenge.

   3. Subsections A and B of this rule may be preferable if you wish to remain in the good graces of the bar owner or any owners of the surrounding table surfaces.

2. Failing to respond to a “coin check” when challenged carries a penalty. Any coin holder who fails to respond to a challenge with their own coin must buy a round of drinks to everyone who successfully responded.

   1. A penalty does not necessarily need to be a drink. It can take the form of any mutually agreed upon service or item of consumption. Please refer to your own group’s specific rules on the matter.

   2. The other coin holders are free to mock you mercilessly. You may feel appropriate shame and remorse for negligence at will.

   3. Participants are allowed a single “freebie” if they genuinely did not know the rules prior to a challenge. It is the responsibility of all other participants to fully explain the rules.

   4. Participants are allowed to take up to, but no more than, three steps away from their position at the time of the initial challenge to retrieve their coin.

3. Should every coin holder present successfully respond, then the challenger is penalized. If you issue a challenge and all coin holders respond, then you must honor your challenge by purchasing a round of drink to all participants.

   1. Please refer to subsections A and B of rule number two.

4. A challenge may be issued at any time or place. So long as there are at least two coin holders in immediate proximity to each other, a challenge may be issued at any time or place.

   1. Issuing a challenge in the middle of a (solemn) funeral, emergency, or shower officially makes you a dick, and the rules of the “coin check” may or may not be honored. Locker rooms are fair game.

5. Losing, misplacing, or gifting away your challenge coin does not grant immunity. Until your coin is replaced, you’re likely responsible for drinks whenever a “coin check” is issued.

   1. It is highly recommended you have your challenge coin replaced before word spreads you are coinless.