So I figured, "What the heck, I've got an hour to kill, why not try bingo?" I quickly found one reason why not: the caller was phenomenally obnoxious. Like a comedian whose audience has stopped laughing, he pushed harder and louder, making his audience less and less likely to respond. At one point he instructed us that anyone seeking a win on a game requiring having the B and G rows filled must claim it by doing a dancing version of the BGs' hit "Stayin' Alive". I won, but simply yelled "Bingo!" He did not insist.
I won two of the four games we played, gaining $67 for the $10 the cards had cost. I was sitting beside a charming woman from Vancouver, BC, who explained the game to me and sympathized with my distaste for the caller's antics. At dinner, I bought wine for my table with my ill-gotten gains.
Two things militate against my playing again. First, of course, would be the caller. But after winning the first and third of four games, I found my hands shaking with excitement during the fourth. Bingo is as purely a game of luck as slot machines, since there is nothing one can do to make a card more or less likely to win. I don't like that jittery feeling. On the other hand, one of my tablemates said he felt the same way on that last game, which required having a card with every space filled to win. The process goes on for a long time -- 24 numbers minimum. Maybe I just have no taste for excitement.
Oh, I beg to differ! I think you have a great taste for excitement, though likely not for Bingo-type excitement. You seem to get excited over things of the mind, things of beauty, things of the Spirit, even challenges in that realm. I'm not surprised that it doesn't translate to wanting the excitement of Bingo.
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