6:30pm It was a dark and stormy night when the bingo players first went without their cigarettes. Call it "The Night the Cigs Went Out" and sing to the tune "The Night Chicago Died". A scary time indeed; much frustration ensued. Perhaps we should start handing out nicotine patches in the future, or at least provide more smoke breaks. Yes the Ohio statewide ban has now taken effect and I for one was saddened. My best chance at martyrdom was giving my lungs for the sake of the Church and tonight there was nothing but clean air.
Because there is no smoking, there are fewer people, and that gives me time to pen this - which I'm guessing is the first attempt ever to live-blog bingo. My mom would be so proud.
8:06pm Co-worker Kim told me a funny story about her eldest son, a well-behaved boy who is approaching the time of his First Communion which means also his first Confession. Not having anything to say to Father, he smeared toothpaste all over his little brother's face so that he'd have something to confess...
Kim gave me grief for missing the greatest drinking song of all time in my drinking song post. I think she called it Chum-a-ching-a-chung-a-chim-a-ring-dong although she couldn't spell it. I really must be getting older that I don't even know a famous recent drinking song.
8:40pm When bingo-selling slows, time drags infinitely. Bingo-induced boredom made me want to make up a little fiction story. So I imagined this:
"Where do you hide your stash?"You get the picture. Boredom does funny things. Or you try to creative selling techniques like calling out every modifier for "Beans", the name of an instant ticket game, that you can think of. (Lima, green, black, kidney, baked...). One co-worker (Kim will recall him) tried to sell his body. He didn't last long.
"Under the mattress. You?"
"Under the bed. My wife doesn't clean there."
Can you relate to these men? Do you also surreptiously read the latest issue of This Rock or Karl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism and then hide them from the other members of your Baptist household?
If so, you may find the need to joing 'TA': Triumphalists Anonymous. At TA, you can go cold turkey from your feelings of truth overadequacy.
9:00pm "Rapid Fire!" says Pat.
"How rapid was it?" (rimshot!)
10:05pm We all gather and do a post-mortem over pizza and pop. One volunteer couple mentioned how during their recent trip to Florida friends there were cruel in rubbing in the Buckeye loss. I mentioned Bill Luse's mother, though not in name. We oozed sympathy. But then they mentioned how three years ago they'd given them an OSU shirt with the score of the Miami/OSU game on it in the wake of the Buckeye 2003 victory and our sympathy didst shrivel. Something about paybacks being hell.
Receipts way down. Where did everyone go? One worker said that there must now be 'bingo speakeasies' where you can play bingo and smoke and drink. Said we should open one up on the sly. Black market bingo: I'd have never imagined those three words together before tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment