Bingo!

Warning: This is really long, but hopefully entertaining.

The grand finale of our "Week Without Kids" hit the inevitable crescendo when we arrived at the Tulalip Casino on Saturday night for a stimulating round of Bingo.

This was my first time playing Bingo somewhere other than a) someones personal residence or b) a school function.

Apparently, playing Bingo in a casino is a lot different than playing "Clifford Bingo" at home with the kids.

For those of you without kids, now might be a good time for me to compare & contrast a few of the differences between Clifford Bingo (Clifford) and Casino Bingo (Casino).

COMPARE:
Clifford: It's fun & entertaining!
Casino: It's fun & entertaining!

Clifford: You can use more than one Bingo card at a time.
Casino: You can use more than one Bingo card at a time.

CONTRAST:
Clifford: Does not have a "Free" Space in the middle.
Casino: Has a "Free" space in the middle, but it's not always used.

Clifford: Playing is Free!
Casino: For only $6 you can be easily entertained for about 3 hours.

Clifford: Games last about 5 to 10 minutes. If you're lucky.
Casino: Allow about 3 hours to get your moneys worth.

Clifford: Everybody Wins. Every time.
Casino: One person wins. Sometimes two or three win, but not very often. And it's not you.

Clifford: Prize: A sense of accomplishment (assuming that you don't mind knowing untrained monkeys would also be winning if they were playing, which they aren't, of course, because at least they realize that picking bugs off their monkey friends offers better rewards than Clifford Bingo).
Casino: Prize: Cash! Prizes (at Tulalip) range between a couple hundred dollars to a sizable fraction of my annual income.

As I mentioned earlier, this was my first time playing Bingo in a casino.
Tanya, on the other hand, claimed to have done this before.
Unfortunately, she seemed even more confused than I was and this fact alone had me completely baffled. Side note: somebody please remind me to post the 1992 Water skiing Incident story on the blog sometime - it's relevant, but is also long and deserves its own post.

We entered the Casino and were met with a wall of cigarette smoke. By the time we reached the Cashier windows my lungs had already turned two shades closer to black. This Casino does have a Smoke Free room, but to visit the cashier, get food or use the restroom you are required to pass through the main (smoke filled) casino area. We did determine that the Smoke Free room does have it's own entrance, but the bushes outside are not to be considered as nature-break opportunities.

The Cashier greeted us with questions that we didn't know how to answer... so she answered them herself.

The conversation went something like this:

Cashier: "Greetings! Welcome to the Tulalip Casino! How can I help you?"
She didn't actually say this but if she didn't have her mouth full of food she might have said something like it.
Eric (E): "Hi. We'd like to play Bingo."
Cashier (C): "Would you like to play Blackout?"
E: "Uh..... .... ..."
C: "They just started the blackout game. You can play if you want. You only need to catch up on five numbers."
E: Looks at T, questioningly.
C: "Six numbers."
E: "No, we'll just play Bingo for now, thanks."
C: "Would you like the Specials?"
E: "Uh... no thanks. We just ate."
C: "Would you like to play doubles? (beginning to clue in that we are complete idiots) It doubles your winnings."
E: "No, not yet, thanks."
C: "Would you like two pads?"
E: "What do you mean?"
C: "You can use two pads and have twice as many game boards."
E & T: Look at the boards... then look at the cashier, quizzically.
C: Confirming that we're idiots, announces "No, you can't keep up. You better just get one pad. That's $6. Each."
T opens her purse and whips out the Credit Card.
C: "Sorry. We only take cash."
T: Rummages around in her purse and pulls out her $12. Her only $12. We're now broke.
C: Hands us our Bingo pads and a sheet of paper which lists which games are played in what order.

We make our way to the Smoke Free room and find a couple open seats between "Fast Food Family" (FFF), "Little Old Lady" (LOL) and just behind "Good Luck Lady" (GLL).

Blackout was still being played... but we didn't really understand what we were supposed to do. We were confused. Tanya felt embarrassed. She offered to go sit in the car and read her book.

I took charge. "First," I said, ""We need something to mark our cards with so we know which numbers have been called." We looked around the room and noticed that everyone had Bingo Daubers. In fact, most people had more than one dauber. Most seemed to have at least four... all in different colors.

We have Daubers at home.
We didn't bring them.
Since we used our cash for the Bingo pads we had to get creative.
"How about just using a pen?" I suggested.
Tanya seemed open to that idea. She shuffled through her purse and pulled out a pen.
One.
Ballpoint.
Pen.
"Do you have another one?" More shuffling.
"Nope."

It became clear that with the speed in which they were rattling off numbers, we were going to have a hard time sharing a pen between us and both our pads. Each pad has six game boards on it.

Very quickly we were wishing this was "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" instead of "Bingo" because we were obviously going to need some life-lines here.

At that point, Tanya claimed she 'had to go to the bathroom'. I didn't know it at the time, but in this situation "go to the bathroom" actually meant she had decided to use a lifeline: Phone a friend.

Once in the bathroom, and after recovering from holding her breath through the smokey room, T called her friend Karicell (K) for advice.
K suggested we buy some Daubers at the casino.
T reminded her that we don't have any cash.
K was out of suggestions.
T held her breath again and made a break back to the smoke free room.

Now it was my turn to use a lifeline: Ask the Audience (aka Cashier).
I figured she probably had experience with playing this game and might be able to offer some answers to obvious questions.
She politely explained that the Bingo pads were color coded and get played in the same order as the schedule (which was printed on a pink sheet of paper).
The schedule also shows the blackout games and the specials that she mentioned earlier.
Since we weren't playing the Blackouts or Specials we would just wait patiently when those games came up and then resume our play with the next color. It made complete sense.

She also explained that all the games weren't just traditional Bingo... they often included other shapes or designs as well, all of which was clearly shown on the schedule. Oh, if I only learned to read!

There was no way I could leave without two more important questions being answered:
1) Do we have to use Daubers to mark off the pads? No. A regular pen is fine as long as you can read the number beneath the ink.
2) When people win Bingo do they really yell it out loud? Yes, they do. Not always loud and obnoxious, but definitely verbal.

Feeling much more comfortable, I returned to T in the Smoke Free room.

After explaining my new learnings to T (who is now even more embarrassed than ever) is when Little Old Lady (LOL), next to me, leaned over and initiated a brief conversation:

LOL: "Do you have something to mark your cards with?"
E: Proudly holding up our one single pen (which is also an advertisement for Epi-Pen) announced, much to Tanya's embarrassment, "Yep! We have a pen!"
LOL: Clearly recognizing that we were Bingo idiots, knew we'd have trouble trying to share a single ballpoint pen. She kindly reached into her magic cooler bag and pulled out not one, but TWO daubers that she let us borrow for the next three hours. Teal and Maroon.
E: "Oh, thank you very much! We really appreciate it." Then, just to make sure everyone was aware, announced "This is our first time playing Bingo."
LOL just nodded her head politely while Tanya pretended that she was in no way part of this conversation.

Shortly thereafter, the Blackout game was completed and we actually started to play Bingo.

Unfortunately, neither of us won anything, but I think we did learn things.

We learned that the Bingo crowd is a whole lot different than the 'real world'.

There is a lot of smoking going on, but there weren't any alcoholic beverages that we saw.

There is free ice water and coffee.

It's really quiet in the Bingo Room. Everyone is focusing on their game boards.

There is a snack bar that lets you order from your table, pay from your table and they'll deliver to your table. For cash of course.

Some people really, really, really get into Bingo.
The Good Luck Charm Lady (GLC) in front of us had her seat all decked out.
Her table top was chock full of various stuffed animals and a multitude of daubers.
She even had a dauber with a picture of Elvis on it.
It's not clear how much good luck the GLC gets from her stockpile, but she didn't have any luck while we were in attendance.

Fast Food Family (FFF) to the left of us had numerous plates of food piled around them, and lots of daubers, but for some reason they weren't interested in throwing away their used Bingo sheets. Instead, they just piled up on top of the food/garbage.

We can easily imagine that some of these people spend an entire day here playing Bingo. That's more than I could handle, but three hours at a time, once in a while, might be fun.

Maybe the next time I get rained out of a hike I'll load my backpack with Daubers and set up camp in the Bingo Hall.

All in all, it was a fun experience. The only downsides were a) the smokey room, b) feeling like temporary idiots and c) we didn't win anything.

So, the next time you just can't come up with something fun to do and you're ready to give up hope... give Bingo a chance. Even if you don't win, it's still fun and costs much less than going to see a movie.

~E