BINGO!

Last Tuesday Josh came into my room with a weird smile on his face.

"So, Jesse and Sarah are going to bingo tonight. You want in?" 

"Bingo?!"

 "yea.."
"Seriously?"
"haha yea"
........

 "OK."

I've never played bingo before. I mean, of course I've played, but I haven't played REAL bingo- you know, the ghetto kind in a giant american legion or similar building with a hundred old ladies. In fact, most people under the age of 60 haven't. Which is exactly why I went. 

We showed up with not much time before it started, and other than a family (i.e. younger kids spending time with their grandparents), we were clearly the only people there who could be considered young. We got a lot of looks too, as a group of tatooed, pierced young whippersnappers (holy crap, that's a word AND I spelled it right?!) showing up at Tuesday night Bingo (behind a Dollar Tree) is definitely worth a look.

yup, it looks exactly like it's portrayed on tv (plus sports!)

Jesse and Sarah had played before, but Josh and I did nothing to pretend that we weren't giant n00bs. Some younger woman in front of us helped out though, telling us how much we needed to pay, what got us what, etc. We decided to pay 5 bucks extra (it was $15 for 10 games of 12 bingo squares) to get sheets that had 6 more boxes. The woman said "If this is your first time playing, I wouldn't recommend that." We said, "but it's just more chances to win!" Boy, were we stupid.

PROS

Chex mix and the heart of a champion

Jesse said that everyone there had good luck charms. I meant to bring my old work toy dinosaur DeeTees, but forgot, and grabbed a cut out Owen Wilson face that's been under the driver's seat of my car for 5 years (for some reason) instead. Josh had a John McClane toy, and Jesse and Sarah both had legos. I opened up my freshly bought DABBIN' FEVER (the winner's ink) marker, and got ready to WIN.

Owen Wilson says "that's too many boxes dude!" (imagine his voice and then look at his face, it's funny)

As soon as we started, we learned something about Bingo we never would have guessed: It's INTENSE. And it's not easy. And in no way was it anything but stupid to get those extra sheets. How on earth do old ladies play this?!

First of all, the guy reading the numbers leaves nowhere near enough time to search through all of the boxes. Second, even if you are up to speed with him, you actually have to be AHEAD of him in order to be ready to yell bingo. He will call out "B6" while the number he just drew- "G60" shows on a video on all of the walls. If you are stamping all of your G60s while he's still technically on B6, and yell out bingo, it doesn't count. So, you have to stamp out the G60, SEE that you have a bingo, and then wait for the NEXT number to come up on the screen and for him to actually call G60 before you can yell. Crazy isn't it? So if you get behind at all (which we often were), you may end up being 2 numbers behind and frantically searching through 18 boxes when someone yells BINGO and the inevitable huffing and puffing of 200 bitter people follows, immediately distracting you from possibly sharing in bingo glory (binglory?).

TV with the next number, wall with numbers called, pissed off ladies

The other thing that we learned is that at real bingo, the idea of bingo being a straight line only happens like twice in the entire night (and it's called "Hardway bingo", and its usually just part of a game. 

LOYAL ORDER OF MOOSE!

Some games had multiple possibilities, like, for game #11: You can get 2 straight lines for "double bingo," "small around robin" (which was a box around the inner square), "large round robin" (a square around the entire box) or "coverall" where every number is punched. This makes things interesting, exciting ("oooooo which game is this?!") and absurdly confusing, like when we played "Quinella," where a 24 also means you stamp out all 42s. And a 35 is also a 53. During the game after that, I instantly fell behind because I was still trying to play this way. 

The best game, which I wish I played, was SHOTGUN BINGO, where the guy called out a new number every half second, and the first person to cover every number on 1 game won like 700 bucks. It was intense, but as it was only 1 game, it looked like an intensity that would be worth it.

The last thing I learned is that some Bingo players cheat by paying 5 dollars to rent, or by OWNING their own computer, where they literally do nothing- at the most, they type in the number, and it automatically punches all of the spots and tells them when they have bingo. This is a super easy way to play, but its also complete bullshit. While we're sweating and freaking out whispering "WAIT- WHAT NUMBER WAS IT!?" and having poor people around us trying to explain everything- while we're accidentally marking numbers or falling 2 turns behind, they're just sitting on their asses, waiting for the screen to tell them that they just won hundreds of dollars. BULLSHIT CHEATERS. And there's no chance for error either, because it's a CHEATING COMPUTER.

So yea, Bingo? Not as fun as you think. I made this face most of the time:

and often did this after games:

It is HARD. It's so fast and so confusing that I honestly could have won several times and never would have known. Can you see anything on that sheet? I sure as hell can't. I can see why older people play this (good brain exercise and hand-eye coordination), but we said it all night and I'll still say it: I have no idea how old people play this. Maybe they miss the stress of a job? They're crazy if you ask me.

Jesse left as a champion though. He unfortunately had to split with 2 other people (and it was a huge mess when he won because someone called out bingo early) but he made money, and we were all jealous of him.

way to go champ (although you've paid for bingo 3 times now so you probably just broke even, but we'll ignore that for now and let you feel special).

currently listening to: Daft Punk- Tron Legacy soundtrack