My title by no means refers to the lack of beauty queens at the Bingo Parlor on a poppin’ Friday night, I’m not that mean. O.K. let me start from the beginning;

One Friday night we felt lucky & thought we’d strike it rich at the local Bingo Parlor. This jaunt included the usual suspects: my mom (68), dad(80), daughter(17) & son(14). We were locked & loaded for our soon to be momentous journey or so we thought. We had our purse filled with a plethora of designer bingo dauber’s & a seat cushion for our backs-as we are NO bingo amateurs. If you’ve never experienced a huge bingo hall, there’s nothing quite like it in the world. Let me give you the lowdown in this synopsis~ the ways of the bingo parlor; SCENERY~ Nutty, usually loud, rude-ass peeps everywhere~ with funny hats/clothes on with their personal home-made bingo bag~ spread out like ants, long tables like at elementary school cafeterias with hard metal chairs placed under them. Another unusual thing, most bingo players are very ritualistic & superstitious, which is a funny as shit to witness. This ain’t your mom’s bingo parlor, it’s very fast paced & players use cards that feature five columns of five squares each, with every square containing a number-so in essence you’re playing more than one card at once, scurry!

BINGO CALLER~ God bless this saint who chooses to be ridiculed in public if he/she should make even the slightest mistake, the players tackle them with not-so-kind words & very loudly~ for reals peeps. But wait there’s more than just bingo that happens here, they also sell items such as: decorative cheetah print dauber’s, snacks, slot-style machine games & scratch off cards-in hopes of winning lots of coinage. The aromas aren’t very delightful either~ Let me describe it~ a mixture of popcorn & smoke in the air mixed with a hint of ear wax, it’s downright vomitous. You may be thinking to yourself right now, then why do you go to a crowded, stinky environment Dawn?, my answer~ because all the above reasons~it’s EXCITING! I digress.

As soon as we got to the bingo hall my parents went to grab seats, preferably in our usual spot~ close to the bathroom for my dad & away from the smoke room for our lungs sake-the usual drill. I stood in line to buy Bingo sheets and my parents quickly informed me, there were no available seats. Shocked I got out of the line and looked for myself, I mean this was a large Bingo facility. A few chairs here & there were available, but not all together, till I came upon this one table with one side available with empty chairs and the other side, WELL~occupied. Let me describe it to you: one rather shapely woman (no offense), one homemade multi-colored bag filled with at least 30 designer dauber’s, 4 bingo sheets in front of her~ no doubt, we were dealing with a PRO. Remember how I mentioned earlier that peeps at bingo were ritualistic & superstitious, I wasn’t lying this lady had and I’m not exaggerating ten troll dolls each in their own outfit standing upright on the table in front of her. I giggled in my mind as I inched near her, I was the only brave one in my party not afraid to ask “Were these seats taken?”~ with one thought lingering in my mind “this lady is WACKO!” I walked over to her table to see if we could move her friends over & sit down, but the look of disdain helped me know telepathy-wise what her answer was, all the while thinking I’d like to mow down those damn trolls with one fell swoop, like dominoes…………………….

Needless to say-we never played bingo that night, but it was so entertaining in itself, we didn’t care. In the car on the way home we all reminisced about what we would do to that weirdo’s trolls & laughed our asses off-so jokes on you troll lady!

P.S. There are also plenty of nice people at the Bingo Parlor, but this wasn’t a article about ALL the peeps at the bingo facility……