BINGO HALL

“B-2,” long pause, “B-2.  I remember back in the war, before all you young kids and this new fangled Internet, we were dropping bombs like bingo balls from B-2’s.  That’s when B-2 really meant something, flash, bingo, you hit your target and there’s a bright explosion.”  Sometime between N-32 and G-58 Grandpa BINGO lost it and started throwing the balls at the front row of the bingo hall.  “You call the damn numbers sonny, you little cyber punk bingo freak.  If I wasn’t O-67 I’d kick your little…”

Have you ever had a bad bingo hall experience?  Grandpa BINGO, normally the sweet old man who makes little jokes for each number he calls—“I-21, I, wish I was 21.”—finds the scotch hidden in the cabinet and a melee ensues turning Wednesday night bingo into a reenactment of the Battle of the Bulge, the Bulge being Grandma BINGO.  Bingo cards become shields and the potluck dinner lands a jackpot right on your lucky card.

That’s the old bingo hall:  the church every Tuesday or the synagogue every Wednesday.  Where your best friend Betsy holds your lucky seat at table 23 and you pay a penny per bingo card hoping to win a one-dollar jackpot.  The night’s not about winning money as much as it’s about listening to Betsy’s gossip, watching the battle between Grandpa and Grandma BINGO, and marking your bingo card with the new pink marker you bought at Ames.  The good old days of bingo, when it was just a game.

Now it’s an industry, the bingo industry, and in 1999 that industry took in over $5 billion in profit.  The bingo hall has turned into a giant bingo tent and the penny has been replaced by high stakes.  The dollar jackpot is now a new red convertible slowly turning in the middle of the bingo tent.  Neighboring the tent is a giant casino filled with black jack tables, slot machines and a bunch of people you’ve never seen before.  Bingo night, a night that used to cost you two-dollars and a crock-pot filled with your famous meatball stew, now runs $20, and that’s just for the gas and the parking.

Sure, the jackpot may be bigger, but there’s a part of you that misses your old simple game, even the occasional explosions from Grandpa BINGO.  You and Betsy don’t get to talk like you used to, keeping constant attention on the $50 worth of bingo cards placed in front of you while trying to keep up with the monotone voice that calls numbers out like they had no meaning.

You may never get that old bingo hall feeling back, but there is a way to play bingo the way you used to.  It may not sound like the old simple game you know and love, but there are online bingo sites that bring the idea of a bingo hall to the Internet and into your home.  Online bingo has its share of high stakes, but there are plenty of ten-cent bingo cards waiting for you on the Internet.  But Betsy, table 23, Grandpa BINGO—Betsy can login from her computer and you guys can chat your little heads off through the virtual bingo hall’s chat room.  Table 23 may not be there, but you can choose a lucky bingo card design to play on.  And Grandpa BINGO, isn’t best if we leave him in the past?