I realize, 24 hours later, that I should follow up on this:
To be clear, I am not addicted to Bingo.
At least, I don’t think I am.
Not yet.
And before I get too far into this, let me note that I have the utmost respect for Old McDonald’s dog.
But this is not about a dog.
This is about the game.
Which, it turns out, is electric.
Here’s what happened:
I’m back in the Midwest this week. Bouncing around, doing things, watching people get married, meeting a puppy, celebrating an engagement, eating McDonald’s on the Kansas Turnpike, having a little bit of a head cold but I got that in Texas. Saw the cats Monday. It was a good day.
Last night was the birthday of one of my old pals in Minneapolis. For the occasion, they were getting the gang together at Elsie’s, a little establishment over in Northeast where folks can bowl. People (a league) were bowling there, though (‘til 10 PM), so the crew audibled to 1029. Which, I thought, was a karaoke bar and nothing more (a good one, though—lot of undergarments hanging on the walls, a telltale sign of hot and heavy karaoking). Turns out it’s much more.
Well, it’s at least one thing more.
It’s also a Bingo bar.
I was confused upon entering, instantly concerned that the ear cloggage I’d created blowing my nose too hard in the car up from Madison that afternoon was more severe than I’d realized. This place was silenter than The Internet™ after I made the meth joke an hour ago. You could’ve heard a pin drop. Were your ears not clogged. Even if they were, you could hear the calm, measured tones of the strict-looking woman sitting at the end of the room saying “O…72…O…72” in between sessions of the unmistakable rattle of Bingo balls™ inside the wheely cage™.
It was Bingo night at the 1029.
And it was lit.
All around, the patrons were intently focused on their cards, which instead of tiles were being marked by very fun pens that looked like some new-age candy from 2002.
I found my friends. Thankfully, this didn’t take very long, because nothing makes one feel more like a ghost than strolling through a silent, packed bar while slightly disoriented by a blocked eustachian tube (bonus ghost points if there are two hammered dudes being intermittently loud, seemingly oblivious to the Bingo—are they also ghosts?). When I found them (the friends, not the ghosts), we didn’t audibly greet one another. That, or I didn’t hear them. My impression, though, was that we all waved quietly at one another, exaggerating our smiles because that’s what people do when greeting each other while having to be quiet and not being at a funeral.
I was too late to play that round. We, as a group, elected not to play the next one (the buy-in was fairly large). Which is why I don’t think I’m addicted to playing Bingo.
But I sure do love watching it.
Watching people play Bingo sounds like the kind of thing I’d put as an interest on a Tinder bio designed to discourage the populace (but hurriedly delete out of fear I’d mislead an Austin-based Bingo-lover). It sounds like the worst possible thing to watch. Especially since it’d be so easy to stop watching and just play.
But boy, is it a rush.
The Bingo game, from my inexperienced view, covers the following stages:
Optimism
The card is fresh, like a frozen lake covered in unperturbed snow. Clear. Smooth. Full of possibilities. The world is hopeful, and so are the competitors, and as long as the competitor gets about half the first few announced squares on one of his or her cards, both them and the world stay that way.
Dejection
Slowly, though, most competitors realize they aren’t winning. There are people around them much busier than them with the funny markers (or the tiles, if you’re at a tile establishment). This isn’t their round. Sadness mounts. Forlornly, three or four squares go by with nary a hit.
False Hope
But then, Bingo plays its best trick.
Cards don’t get emptier as the game goes on. They only grow fuller. Which deceives competitors into saying things like “I’m only two away!” when pretty much everyone else in the arena is waiting for one or more specific squares that would end the game. The “if only” game is strong with Bingo.
Elation/Bemused Relief/Rage
Finally, it happens.
Bingo.
But it isn’t a statement. It’s a shout (it’s late here—I don’t want to wake the neighbors with too many exclamation points). It’s a shout from one or a few people. It releases words from the clenched mouths of competitors and that-one-dude-who-came-late alike. Everyone can talk. And the reactions range wildly.
For the winner(s), obviously, the predominant emotion is triumph. But this is rare. Much more common is that a person at the next table over won, making competitors’ better natures win out, expressing themselves in communications of support and congratulations.
Then, there are the people who were really far away from winning, or people who have yet to be cursed by the fickle (I’d imagine) fates that rule Bingo halls from here to Canberra. For them, the end of the game is a laughing matter. “Boy, that was sure a fun one. *laughs*”
But there are others. Perhaps they’re the jealous types. Perhaps they’ve been snakebitten by the sport. Whatever the cause, they are angry. As The Internet™ would say, they big mad.
***
Little, as an observer, is as exciting as watching someone punch the table much too hard in frustration, spilling their beer. But one thing that is, in fact, more exciting is watching a packed bar wait with anticipation for a strict-looking woman who will later imply that a table full of people must be loaded if they aren’t willing to shell out $25 a head to play a round of Bingo for a thousand-dollar pot that’s really a ninety-nine-dollar pot (this was the most backwards logic ever, but yes, everyone was appropriately ashamed of their financial stability, absent the guy who didn’t quite hear how much each card cost because his ear was full of boogers) to say “B…6…B…6” as though it determines which competitors’ children will and won’t come down with scarlet fever over the upcoming winter.
Yes, Bingo is a beautiful game. I will likely become hooked, if I am not already, and when I get back to Austin, there is a very real chance that this blogger reaches out to his cousin to inquire about visiting the local Bingo establishment, which this blogger believes is on Riverside pretty close to his cousin’s favorite taco truck (as of May).
Bingo.
