Bingo Neighbours

My new mother, and two sisters-in-law took me to a bingo in Warwick R.I. shortly after my second husband and I were married.  It was a relatively small bingo hall and it was packed to the rafters.  We found the last seats in the house where we would be able to sit together.   I sat at the end corner, across from this ancient man.   The man was very annoyed that we sat there.   He felt crowded out, for really no good reason.   There was just enough room.   The man kept up a steady stream of whining the entire evening.   I made a few attempts at funny one liners but this guy was not going to smile if it killed him.

My sister in law was pregnant out to here at the time and this guy kept saying nasty things about unwed teen aged mothers, lol.   Linda was 26 and way married, lol.  My mother in law had an overbite and he made several nasty comments about that as well.   He picked on me about my weight, I was about 5 months along.  My other sister in law was a flawless beauty,  as well as elegant,  smart and a posessor of a great sense of humor ( I really hated her !!(JK)) well since there was nothing about Joyce that he could critisize he carried on about how vapid and empty headed attractive women could be and how they were always so lost once their beauty faded.

At the end of the evening, after the man had finaly stopped whining, (at this point he was just shooting really nasty looks at us) and well , that’s when the incident took place.    He and I were both waiting on one number. Well I went to stand up to stretch and being a clutz I managed to catch the table leg on his side and the table leg collapsed, sending this mans cards and all of the little bingo chips that were on them scattering in every direction.   Well the look on his face was pure venom and we all started laughing while we were crawling around picking the chips and cards up.   The man, when he found his voice again, (his face was quite an alarming shade of purple) jumped up and started yelling at the top of his lungs,  “stop the bingo!! STOP IT RIG!

I want the polie called,  these dirty rotten bunch of trailor trash women just threw my cards all over the floor so that I couldn’t yell bingo before this great big fat lady!!” “I am going to sue them, call the cops!!” Needless to say, the four of us were just rolling around on the floor with tears streaming we were laughing so hard!  That’s right about the time when the bingo caller called the number I was waiting for, and I yeled BINGO!! and now this man is going to hunt me down after bingo and”gut me like a fish!!”   The bingo dudes actually came to see if I wanted to press charges! lol!  This too incensed him! Oh my!   Well when they brought my money from the bingo I split it in half and tried to give him half.   However he wasn’t going for that either, he moved quicker than I would have guessed he ever could, and slapped the money right out of my hand and sent it fluttering to the floor!   Then he started (I never dreamed I would ever use this word in a sentence but it describes him to a t) cackling,  realy cackling loudly and yelling “How do you like it you big, fat, ugly slob!!

By now, because we cannot stop laughing, and laughter can be so contageous, every man and woman in the bingo hall were also shaking with laughter.    Eventually it is time to leave, bingo is over.   The man follows us, pretty closely,  all the while muttering under his breath about these “dumb broads!!”   Just as we exited the building I turned to him and smiled very sweetly while I told him that we all enjoyed our time with him so much that we planned to return every week so we could enjoy his company over and over and don’t forget to save us some seats!

I do hope that you all got a chuckle out of my story, I worry that it looses something in the translation because it was a situation where you really had to be there. We did go back there the folowing week just for the giggles, but our sweetie pie wasn’t in attendance, one of the bingo callers came over and told us that he told him that he would never come back to this bingo hall again,  he joined the church bingo where people didn’t throw your stuff all over the floor!

Well Peeps,  that’s my story and I am sticking to it!  I did forget to mention that my next to miss america beauty of a sister in law spoke to him only once in the early stages of our delightful evening when the old dude was carring on and on and on about how we were “crowding him out, stealing his space, this is his bingo and we had no right and we dumb damn broads ought to go to our own bingo so that I can play in peace and blah, blah,blah” Well Joyce the beauty who looks like sugar would melt in her mouth finaly gets up, and points to his section of the table and yells, ” will you ever shut the hell up? what is wrong with you?  Look, there is enough space on your side of the table to land an f’ing B52!!  That was the only time that he didn’t have a come back , he just sat there stupified to hear these words flowing out of that pretty face!   This is also the point where the entire bingo hall began to enjoy the show as much as we dumb broads!

by LOIS M