friday bingo night

last night i went to a school-sponsored bingo night. i didn't come to play but to work there. evidently parents from this school (it's not the school i work at. it's a catholic school, just in case you're wondering) were obligated to work during bingo nights or else get fined for 150 bucks. so one of the parents asked me to stand in for her and she'll pay me 5o bucks for it. oo naman ako since i had nothing to do (sadly) and sayang din ang 50 bucks. so off i went to the said event.

the sight that greeted me was one i had never seen before. first, there were a lot of senior citizens there. to be quite honest i don't think there was any bingo player in there under the age of 60 (except for this one boy who was there with his grandma). not to be mean or anything but it looked like a senior-citizen home decided went on a field trip and decided to play bingo instead. i kid you not, there was an old lady there who was already in a wheelchair and a few on walkers already. if you looked really closely, you could see their hands shaking as they marked their bingo cards. moving on, what surprised me even more was that these people took their bingo seriously. they were serious and i mean SERIOUS bingo players. they had bingo-themed seat cushions, specially-made bingo bags that had bingo markers on the side (i didn't even know there existed special markers for bingo!), bingo card holders and a lot of other stuff that apparently were used for bingo that i never knew about. the only times i've ever played bingo were on my sister's school bingo and those bingo games were fun. everybody would be shouting what number they needed next to get a bingo and you could here people talking excitedly as their cards got filled up. but last night was so different. the announcer (another senior citizen) looked like he was about ready to keel over and he would shush people when they started to get a little to noisy (because it disturbed the concentration of the other players) and the players gave you mean looks if you tried looking at their cards. for a bingo game, these people sure were competitive. it was like stepping into a different world.

while i was there, walking around and selling cards all i couldn't help but feel a little sad for them because they have nothing better to do and nowhere else to be than a bingo night. but more than that, all i could think of was that i NEVER wanted to be like them. i don't want to grow up old and have the highlight of my week be friday night bingo. god, i hope i never end up being one of them bingo ladies. please. i might shoot myself if that ever happens. although come to think of it, it was a friday night and i was already doing bingo night so- buti na lang i was getting paid to be there or else i would have felt more sorry for myself.