Bingo!

I've played Bingo since I was a little kid, one of the ways I learned numbers and (5) letters. Growing up on a resort, it was one of the evening entertainments for guests after a presumably long day fishing. (Not catching, necessarily, just fishing.) My parents also offered evenings of canasta, also a good way for a kid to learn numbers before school.

Of course I never won anything, at either kind of game, whether I won or not. Same for my older brother. We were there mostly so our folks could keep an eye on us before bed. We were absolutely not allowed to win. That was reserved for the paying guests. At the time I found it totally unfair, though I found later that it had done a fairly good job of killing my competitive streak in playing games. After all, what was the point? And even if either of us had won, prizes tended to be things like fishing lures. 

Big whoop.... yawn.

I rarely played Bingo over the years since, and even when I did I never won. So where was the fun? (And as for canasta, I promptly forgot the rules. There were other card games.)

Tonight Steve and I went out to dinner at a Muddy Cow restaurant with a friend of his and a couple of his nearly grown sons. It turned out to be Bingo night there. We had finished eating, so did we want to play? Steve had talked about it in the car on the trip down, and we'd decided that, like much of his world, it would depend on how his back was doing. He said it was doing fine, so he paid the buy-in fee for two sets of cards, three each for ten different games. Winning any of the first 9 meant getting a pot of $75, or if there were more winners at the same time, splitting the pot. The final game was Cover-All with a pot of $1,000.

I had no expectations of winning, and it was looking well into the games that my losing streak at Bingo was continuing. Each game we all had 3 cards to play on one strip of paper. Often a number which was called appeared in two of the cards, though of course not in a way which filled in something for a Bingo on my cards. There were games I was familiar with, and some new to me, requiring unusual patterns  with interesting names. About halfway through the game I actually got a Bingo! All by myself, not one to share. Steve got his buy-in fee returned, a tip was left, and I wound up with gas money for the night.

A couple games later, Steve got a Bingo! Unfortunately, his was shared. He also took out a tip  for the staff running the game. Some time between my win and his, we were the only two left at our table. His back was rapidly worsening, but he was determined to stay till the very end and give us our chance to win a grand. The game lasted a long time, being a cover-all, and it was fun between the numbers to exchange updates on how full our cards were getting, watching ordinary but meaningless bingos mount up on our cards. I was so into the fun when that last game started I whispered "Bingo" after the first number was called. Steve was the only person within earshot, but we both got a chuckle. Even with the pain he was in by the time we left, he had a blast. And I managed to end my forever-losing streak.

In the morning he goes to see a new pain doc. We have no idea whether, after everything that has been tried, there is any thing more than can be done to bring some good results. Neither of us is as optimistic of a "win" then as we had tonight.s