B4, I’ve Never Played Competitive BINGO B4!

Bingo spells bing, bong and boing!

Tonight, after a very productive day around the house with wheels, Maureen and I decided we needed a date night. Since we embarked on this adventure, we have not had a night to ourselves. As luck would have it, directly across the street from the handy dandy KOA in Alamogordo, lies the Eagles Airie #2019 with bingo on Tuesday nights!

For those of you who don’t know my habits and hobbies, bingo is not one of them. At least not “serious” bingo.

We walked across the street, hand in hand, ready for casual bingo without boys but maybe with an adult beverage or two. The sign said “doors open at 5:30-bingo calling starts at 7”. As we entered the lot, it looks fairly full, but there is no activity. We open the only door we see and….creek it opens with a slight breeze. We step into a room where bingo is already underway and we are new people. No bar, nothing but bingo daubers, bingo paper cards and cigarettes! Maureen and I are out of place from the start! We buy the minimum mega pack of nine cards each for each game. They are already three games into a ten game night. We missed the first three but paid for them anyway! Of course, we didn’t have the special daubers, so Maureen rushed up and bought some. She, of course, got the bright purple and I was blue!

For those of you who haven’t experienced competitive bingo, I will give you a little picture of what I saw:

-I was mildly challenged managing my 9 cards. Several people were playing with 60+ cards. One lady had at least 90 cards!

-If you are “of status”, you must arrive with special “bingo bags”. These bags have pockets for lots of daubers, pens, cigarettes, snacks, etc.

-If you intend to manage 99 cards, it’s best you have a plastic glove on one hand, a pillow on your seat and tape to hold all 99 cards together.

-There are “special” games that you buy in addition to bingo. If the caller says “this next game is Wonky Willy”, you best know what that means. Maureen and I started marking our cards, but we didn’t have the “special cards”. This meant that when we started “real bingo” again, we had to use different colors on the cards we had already marked…thankfully we didn’t win that round!

-“I26, I26. Mark it now because I26 doesn’t light up!”

-Proper bingo calling attire includes t-shirts. I really have nothing funny about wearing a t-shirt, unless of course the shirt says “Healthy Foods” with vegetables printed on the front…while she eats one of the largest ice cream bowls I’ve ever seen!

-Competitive bingo includes shapes and games which are unique. Small diamond with corner squares and wild numbers with nine blocks. Pay attention folks!

-During blackout bingo, when you only have nine cards to manage versus 99, boredom can set in. Maureen decided she would draw with her dauber. Finger painting while playing bingo is frowned upon! Our success at blackout was nil. Just look at all the space left on my card!

In the end, date night wasn’t a complete bust. We got out of the trailer, we had some fun and we saw all kinds of interesting! Here’s to many more nights of interesting!