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No...this is not a personal ad!
It's my attempt to chronicle Wednesday night at the bingo hall (I've been calling it a bingo parlor but I've learned that the correct term is bingo hall...bingo gods, please forgive me).
I'm not really sure where to begin except for to say that this "night on the town" was an awesome, refreshing, fun slice of Americana - and one that will be repeated.
Let me set the scene for you...Amy, Yvonne, Nancy, Suzanne, and I arrived at Big Star Bingo just before the 8:30 p.m. game started. The parking lot was PACKED and there was a "guard" in the parking lot - guess because there was serious money being won inside. As soon as we opened the door we were met with a wall of smoke. Crazy. I haven't been in any place so smoky in a looooooooooooong time. Never fear, there is a non-smoking room but you have to go through the smoking room - which makes me laugh - and the smoking room is easily twice as large as the non-smoking room.
We made our way to the counter where we easily purchased our "cards/sheets" and daubers. Deal of the century - $5.00 for the dauber + 5 sheets of frames (with 12 frames each). Seriously...it's like they are giving it away. But, wait, it gets better. Someone mentioned that it was my birthday (or my birthday celebration) and the guy behind the counter got all excited and said, "Well, then, you play for a penny! And you get an extra set of sheets AND an electronic bingo machine that essentially lets you play a whole bunch of sheets at once but you only have to press a button and the machine does all of the work for you...even tells you when you have Bingo.
The cars in the parking lot were just a hint of the mess of people inside of the bingo hall. Table after table, tons of people with very few empty seats. We tried to all sit together but ended up at two tables (back-to-back). The people around us looked a little intimidating at first but it was quite obvious that we were rookies and soon enough there were actually a couple who were willing to help us understand the ins and outs of this game. Because it isn't your 5-year-old's Bingo game, friends. No bingo in a line or a diagonal or anything. Nope. There was double bingo, three-way bingo, and a few other configurations that would need diagrams - which thankfully there were! There are TV screens showing the ball that corresponds to the square you want to be able to fill in with your dauber - for example, I25 or G57. And it was also called out over a speaker. Aside from that, the bingo hall is pretty quiet. There is a weird feeling of tension because you know with every number called someone is getting closer to winning the jackpot (literally, $500 for some games...$750 for the last one!). But the place is also pretty peaceful because everyone is concentrating so hard on making sure they've colored in the appropriate numbers. There's very little talking, except for the guys walking around saying, "top dollar, bottom dollar, pull-tabs, blazing balls..." Which always made us laugh - I don't care if I did just turn 36.
An hour or so later we were walking away from our tables, daubers in hand, no big wins in our pockets but a promise to return in the future. So if you ever think I've disappeared from the social scene, start checking out bingo halls in Austin! (Thanks to Amy for making my bingo birthday wish come true!)