B-I-N-G-O

On Sunday I got to spend some quality time alone with my mom. We got to go out and play basket bingo together. Bingo?! Yes, bingo. Some may think that it's a game for nursing home residents only, but you would be surprised at the wide variety of ages who attend. I remember going as a teenager to with my mother to play bingo on Tuesday nights. We loved our nights out. It was a local Catholic church and boy was it rowdy! People would talk, laugh, etc. at it. They had little things to do when certain numbers were called (ring bells, blow whistles, sing little ditties, etc.). When the church stopped having bingo night we were really disappointed. It was a night that we got to go out and laugh and have a good time while we bonded. Shortly after that I moved away to Alaska. So we never had a chance to find a replacement for that activity. Flash forward about 9 or so years and I am back home in Pennsylvania with two children and in definite need of a sanity break every now in then. One day I happen to see an advertisement for a local basket bingo, it is on a Sunday afternoon which is perfect as it means both my mother and I can go. (I can not attend the ones on week nights due to hubby's work schedule. And the person who would babysit for me, aka Mom, is the person I want to go out with.) So we ventured off to bingo and had a great time. We laugh, talk and bond. It's not as rowdy as our old haunt, but the idea is the same... To spend time together. There are some differences between the regular bingo we used to play and the basket bingos that we get to go to about 2-3 times a year. One is the frequency of them. Every week at regular bingo versus one to three times a year if we can find basket bingos in our area on Sundays. Another is the crowd. Basket bingo is more of a serious game and there is very little carry-on there. You may hear some laughter once in a while, but it is a quiet chuckle. Another difference that astonished me is the amount of food that some people bring to these events. Some people lay out a whole spread. Now this is shocking because usually they sell food at basket bingo for the crowds, but apparently it is also a bring your own kind of deal as well. The first time we went, we had no idea of this unwritten "policy". The next time we wised up and brought along our favorite munchies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hear you saying "Get on with it. Did you win or what?" Ummm... No. I didn't win a single dern thing, dang it. I got close a couple of times, and almost had a heart attack as I waited for that number to be called. No such luck though. In fact I have never won bingo at one of these things. A glutton for punishment I am! However, during a raffle at one last year I won two baskets and my mother won one as well. Quite a happy day for us. This time my mom won a door prize, some "smellies" as she calls them--soap and lotion. NOTE: The pictures featured in this blog were from a basket bingo in March that my mother was unable attend at the last minute. I went without her and took some pictures of it all, as it was one we had never been to before. I would have taken a snap or two of the one we went to on Sunday, but I still can not locate my camera battery charger. Grrr!