My Bingo Rant - OT Humor by me

[Jeff]

Bingo.

If you've ever wanted to hear a room full of old ladies cussing, this is the ultimate sport to engage in.  

I play bingo every so often with my wife & sometimes my parents or other family members.  I do it not to win, but as a slow drain of my money vice the blackjack table which sucks it all up at once.  We term it "feeding the Indians" since we have no "real" American casinos around here.  Slot machines are out of the question as you'd have to stand on an oxygen hose long enough to get the old lady feeding it to pass out, and then take it over.  Forget it.  Bingo is where it's at...

You sit in this large hall that is quite reminiscent of a bus depot.  It's filled with ungodly fat people wearing sweat pants, and old people with walkers, oxygen bottles and a couple cartons of cigarettes.  Many of these people mean business.  They have special utility belts, holding 10 dobbers, a dozen markers, pens and a couple good luck charms.  These are the pros.

I play like 6 cards since this is all my 33 year old, relatively intelligent mind and lightning fast reflexes can process.  What is incomprehensible to me though are these "pros" who play like 58 cards.  They play a whole friggin table full of cards.  Now what kills me about it is that these are the same little old ladies that drive one mile every 6 weeks on the highway while sitting on a stack of phone books, and can't walk faster than a snail's pace.  But put a dobber in their hand and they become invincible super-humans.

These freaks of nature sit there, 2 dobbers in each hand, whacking cards at a pace that sounds like a hail storm on a tin roof.  And in between numbers being called, they're sucking down yet another camel or winston bare-ass.  Smoke penetrates your soul.

The bingo caller has the greatest job in the world.  Wanna see an old ladies pulse raise?  Want chubbo to lose a few pounds?  Just increase the pace of those numbers a bit...  Watch 'em sweat...

Bingo patterns aren't the same as when I was a kid and we had to get a straight or diagonal line.  No, there's the upside-down K, the crazy Kite, the broken arrow and a hundred other combinations which are impossible to discern as a real bingo.  I'm pretty sure I've won a few times but have no idea since I keep looking for a straight line that isn't there.  Then there's the time that I finally got that straight line, flew out of my chair and yelled "BINGO" loud enough for pops on the other end of the room holding the tube to his ear, to hear me; only to find out I needed something else.  That really pissed everyone off.  Cool!  Now I'm the center of attention (as old ladies & fat people grumble).  I loudly mumble a quick "fsck yourself!".

So here I am, struggling with 6 cards, when jabba-the-hut across from me playing 25 cards successfully, reaches across and dobs a number that I missed!  Yes!  She's actually completing her own and paying enough attention to track MY numbers too!  How is this possible?  Can't people with supreme talents like this get real jobs so they can afford to play craps?

I leave, $30 lighter than I entered.  As I got in the car, I broke wind.  Hard, loud, long...  It smelled like smoke...

[spyderchick]

Kind of makes you really appreciate racing. Save your #30 and use it for gas... :o ;) ;D