The Lingo of B I N G O.
Artist, actor, poet, teacher, songwriter & actor with 4,000 poems & almost 1,000 songs written, performed recorded & published on line.
The tools of winning big or going home minus a hundred or more dollars
Bingo Personal computer game board
Prizes
One of my many Bingo wins
Gettng ready to play BINGO
Lucky Charms
After investing $224.00 for an electronic bingo computer plus an all on paper set of 4 bingo cards per game & early bird & warm ups all promising chances at wi
Of course I will be sitting for a couple of
hours just get a good table and seat
until at long last the game begins. The
room is huge and is usually filled with
folks who are old enough to have
been around way back when
Bingo was first invented.
There are enough canes, walkers
and wheelchairs to support two
three story Nursing homes.
BIngo was first invented in 1503
Imagine that, I never knew it was so
old. It started as a form of a lottery
in Italy long before the mob, then it
caught on in France and became very
popular in Great Brttian. Instead of
eating fish and chips folks in England
spent their money on fishing for chips.
It became popular in the U.S. in 1778
as a children's game called, "Lotto."
Most of the poeple who attend Bingo have
the front of their tables full of lucky charms.
They swear by them. And they swear even
louder when the charms fail to grant them
a bingo. I have to be honest though, playing
slot machines is a lot faster way to win
money. Nobody is calling every number that
you don't need on your card. You don't have to
sit there and wait for the one number you need
to win at bingo. Just stick a twenty in the slot
push the button twenty times and "Walla!" you
either win or you lose. Far too often someone else
yells annoying loud, "Bingo", twenty numbers or
so after you have been set to get it. This is a sheer
form of mental torture when you are set to win with
one number and it doesn't pop out of the ping
pong ball machine....as if the last caller stuck their
used chewing gum on it in a prior bingo session.
Worst of all it does you no good to pray to God to
magicaly make the number you need appear
even in church bingo. You might meed just one more
number for a fill up to win $3,000.00 dollars but
God is way to busy guilting society into filling up the
plates of al lthe hungry people in the world. He
doesn't have time to make sure you win some cash.
The cacophony of groan and moans and curses and
dabbers being slammed down on table when a bingo
is called is about 30 decibels. Of course this damages
the hearing of a lot of the older folks who won't hear
their numbers called and gives you a better chance
at winning. You sit on hard, metal folding chairs for
hours bent over way to many game cards, giving birth
to millions if not billions of large ink dots all over the
U.S. all for naught. But it has been said that bingo
sharpens your mental accuity with all the thinking and
motor skills you are using. If they could make the
dabber weigh 40 pounds each you might also be able
to lose weight just by playing bingo. aAt least you arms
would get buff. Bingo used to be played beneath a huge
cloud of blue smoke and a cancer ridden atmosphere
but they banned smoking some years ago. Which is
good except that a lot of Bingo parlors closed because
most of the Bingo players liked to smoke. Thousands
just stopped going. They also sell cards that are called
pull tabs. They cost a dollar a piece and folks at bingo
spend hundreds of dollars to buy them. They then pull
back six tabs on each card hoping for a huge cash
prize and usually get a useless piece of colorful
cardboard. Somewhere in all of the landfills across the
United States are literally billions of these cards all
representing lost dreams and cash expended.
Occasionally I have won with one of these pull tabs
sometimes even three or four hundred dollars, but
I usually pull my last twenty out of my wallet and go
home broke. It is all simply the lure of sudden riches.
If I had only invested all of my hard earned money I
spent on bingo into the company that produces pull
tabs, I could quite posiibly be a millionaire. But alas I
am one of many who would rather come up empty most
of the time I pull tabs. My dear mother got me hooked
on bingo when I was old enough to play it. I went with
her to help carry her snacks and drinks and pillows
for her sore butt and her many lucky charms as well
as her HUGE Bingo bag. I was her bingo valet and it
became a family business with five children getting
involved eventually. She actually won enough to pay me
a mere pittance so I tagged along. I will warn you, if
you decide to try bingo be prepared to become addicted
to it. But only if you win. Once you win, you are sucked
into other bingo games much like each ping pong ball
is sucked up through a tube one at a time to call the
next number. You wil learn to envy your nieghbors at
the next table when they win two or three games, and you
will hate that one lady or man who always win while you
are going home broke again. B- stands for Buy,
I- stands for Irratated, N- stands for No money left,
G- stands for Get out before you spend all your
cash and O- is what you yell every time you lose.
But it is fun and full of anticipation right up to the
very last ball called. Anyone on any given day
can win and they do but I am one of those who
who seldom comes out ahead when the chips
are down. The latest additon to bingo is a
computerized game board which I love. It keeps
an accurate track of your numbers and marks
the numbers on the six game boards that you have
on your screen when they are called and it beeps
rather loudly when you are one number away
from winning LOTS OF MONEY. How easy is that.
A no hands, no eyes, no real thinking or motor skill
involvement while you sit back and let the computer
maker you a winner. I usually take a good book and read
for two or three hours while the computer tabulates
my chances. The ultimate, most lazy way to make money.
All around you, poeple are frantically dabbing polka
dots and some are missing a few numbers cause they
might be missing a few brain cells and you are
guaranteed an accurate accounting of your losses
and or wins. Computer bingo could and may
eliminate all of the paper and pull tab landfill
waste as well as all of the empty, plastic bottles
that the dabbers are made out of. Bingo will never
go away, because there are too many folks who
just love to play but at least it has stepped into the
twenty-first century. So go give it a try if you dare
and never take more then you can afford to lose.
Your wife will love you more if you tag along,
and your hubby will tag along just to make sure
you don't spend the mortgage on pull tabs.
The money you spend does go to a charitable
organization and that money does a lot of good,
"BUT" some of the money also goes to that lady you
hate who always wins and that guy three tables
in front of you who just stole the money you were
set to win by getting his last number called before
yours was. All this and more goes on nightly
in just about anytown across the U.S. Just think
of what you are missing.
© 2022 Matthew Frederick Blowers III
