BINGO!

A few nights ago while we were at a local bar eating burgers, a lady parked herself at a table next to the pull tab bins and started calling out Bingo numbers. Every five minutes someone would yell out "Bingo!" and then some dude wearing a Mountain Dew cap walked through the bar selling Bingo cards for the next round. I asked the boys if they wanted to play but they just looked at me like I was crazy. I was relieved that they said no since I didn't want to waste beer money on Bingo cards and said, "Oh, it's probaby good you don't want to play, since I think you have to be 18 or older."

"Are you sure about that?" Zach asked. "It looks to me like you have to be 60 or older."

I wanted to argue with him and tell him that wasn't a very nice thing to say, but I couldn't stop laughing. I looked around and sure enough, everyone (meaning 28 women, two men) that had a Bingo marker in their hand was wearing a moose-printed fleece coat, adjusting a pair of reading glasses as they strained to read the numbers on their cards and was bitching out the number caller because "we can't hear you!" Whenever "Bingo" was yelled out, it was quickly followed with groans and a couple "tsk-tsk's" as these people leaned in their chairs and strained their necks, trying to get a good look at the winner and give a nasty glare over the top of their glasses.

Midway through the third game, Zach wanted to yell out "Bingo!" while waving his arms around, just to see the reactions. I said no, he said yes. I said no that's not very nice. He said come on it'll be funny. I texted Doug, who was out of town for work, expecting to receive some long-distance parental support in the form of a reply, but instead all he said was "Tell him I dare him."

I told Zach he probably shouldn't, since these women seemed to take their Bingo pretty seriously and I wasn't about to save him from this angry mob of Buick drivers. And then I felt a little bad for promoting the stereotype that "only old women play Bingo."

Zoe has been reading book after book lately, and when she finds one that she likes she reads it over and over again. One of her current favorites is "The Grandma Book" by Todd Parr. The book is filled with bits of wisdom about grandmas like "some grandmas have a lot of cats, some grandmas give you a lot of advice" or "some grandmas drive slowly." Right after she read "some grandmas like to dance" she got to this page:

So I guess you're right, Zach. The minimum age for Bingo isn't 18, but is in fact 60. Except for Zoe's grandma, of course, since she prefers slot machines and she drives her Buick fast.