Bingo Wizard
Cyrano de Bergerac wins at Bingo.
Some time ago, teachers from around the world gathered and decided that there was to be one way and one way only to educate elementary and middle schoolers, and that would be Bingo. Screw textbooks, screw construction paper and glue, screw dodgeball, these days school is pretty much just Bingo and recess. I’m sure there was an AP Bingo class at my high school, and the Department of Bingo sent me a letter not too long ago about a possible minor in, well, you know.
No, I’m serious, though: We would play Bingo all the freaking time in elementary school! That was like the only thing they could think of to do with us! For example, my fourth grade class, like all people everywhere except my readers from MIT, were horrible at fractions. Why was there a line between the top number and the bottom number? We didn’t know, and our teacher sure as hell couldn’t seem to explain it to us,* so she broke out the Bingo cards.
*My fourth grade teacher was a mean old hag who would kick us out of class if we chewed gum or drank pop, but then she herself would chew gum and drink pop at her desk while we worked! I brought the unfairness inherent in this up to her one day, and she said “Life isn’t fair, Truman.” Well, yeah, I know, but that doesn’t mean you have to be part of the problem, lady! What if they started paying you less because you were a woman? You’d just have to suck it up and deal with it because life isn’t fair. What if they paid you less because you were a mean, crappy teacher? That would be poetic justice.
Now, here’s the thing about Bingo: It has no educational value past simple motor skill testing. You hear the word (or fraction, as the case may be in Fraction Bingo) and look to see if it’s on your pink laminated card. If it is, you put a scrap of paper over it. Then you wait to hear more numbers that might make a line of paper scraps, so that eventually you can yell Bingo and get a Jolly Rancher. What kind of education is that!? I know what a freaking fraction looks like, what I don’t know is how to add the damn things! The only thing you can learn from Bingo is that your Bingo card will always come within one square of a winner, and then some Aryan looking kid with a name like Kyle will get a Bingo just before you. And then he’ll join choir in high school and be really, really popular.
I think the number of Jolly Ranchers you received in elementary school determined how successful you were going to be in life. If you drove a Dodge Charger and dated all the cheerleaders and some of their mothers in high school, you probably spent most of your childhood sucking down cherry Jolly Ranchers because you had the Bingo cards that were winners. I did not like Jolly Ranchers, which would explain nearly everything that happened to me in high school, but even if I did like Jolly Ranchers it wouldn’t have mattered because I was bad at Bingo. Now, of course, being “bad” at Bingo is like being “bad” at going to the bathroom: There’s no real conceivable way for it to be possible without considering very embarrassing social issues, and while I’m very sure that I had a plethora of social issues in elementary school, that didn’t seem to be the reason for my bad luck with Bingo. I could find what the teacher called out just fine, and I could recognize a straight line of torn up bits of paper with the best of ‘em, but my cards just never warranted a Bingo. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t win a single Bingo game in my entire educational career, always just coming close to the win and then watching Kyle, who probably grew a totally rad soul patch in like seventh grade, take it away from me. There came a time at which I was in it not for the prize, but just for the very sensation of winning at Bingo and knowing I wasn’t cursed.
Well, big news, everybody: It took me 19 years, but yesterday I won a freaking game of Bingo – and for a $650 jackpot, no less! It’s part of the halftime festivities at the UO basketball games, and a bunch of guys in the band bought Bingo cards, and I won! Me and about 50 other people. When the University mails me my check for $2, I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall. Bingo, like life, isn’t fair. It’s the one game you play in elementary school where there isn’t a happy, positive ending for everyone, and just when it looks like you’re going to win it, you with the funny name who’ll go on to be speech team vice president and band treasurer and the guy known for nothing more than his hair, somebody with a much more conventional and popular name will get there before you. But you keep playing Bingo, don’t you? Maybe it’s because they make you, but you keep playing Bingo.
Incidentally, last week somebody in the band won a $93 jackpot from Bingo. His name was Kyle.
Truman Capps would like to take a moment to commemorate his blog’s 1000th hit, which came from Ann Arbor, Michigan. If this particular reader would please send him his or her name, address, social security number, credit card information, and birth certificate, Truman will make sure to buy them something nice before leaving the country in his newly acquired zeppelin.
No, I’m serious, though: We would play Bingo all the freaking time in elementary school! That was like the only thing they could think of to do with us! For example, my fourth grade class, like all people everywhere except my readers from MIT, were horrible at fractions. Why was there a line between the top number and the bottom number? We didn’t know, and our teacher sure as hell couldn’t seem to explain it to us,* so she broke out the Bingo cards.
*My fourth grade teacher was a mean old hag who would kick us out of class if we chewed gum or drank pop, but then she herself would chew gum and drink pop at her desk while we worked! I brought the unfairness inherent in this up to her one day, and she said “Life isn’t fair, Truman.” Well, yeah, I know, but that doesn’t mean you have to be part of the problem, lady! What if they started paying you less because you were a woman? You’d just have to suck it up and deal with it because life isn’t fair. What if they paid you less because you were a mean, crappy teacher? That would be poetic justice.
Now, here’s the thing about Bingo: It has no educational value past simple motor skill testing. You hear the word (or fraction, as the case may be in Fraction Bingo) and look to see if it’s on your pink laminated card. If it is, you put a scrap of paper over it. Then you wait to hear more numbers that might make a line of paper scraps, so that eventually you can yell Bingo and get a Jolly Rancher. What kind of education is that!? I know what a freaking fraction looks like, what I don’t know is how to add the damn things! The only thing you can learn from Bingo is that your Bingo card will always come within one square of a winner, and then some Aryan looking kid with a name like Kyle will get a Bingo just before you. And then he’ll join choir in high school and be really, really popular.
I think the number of Jolly Ranchers you received in elementary school determined how successful you were going to be in life. If you drove a Dodge Charger and dated all the cheerleaders and some of their mothers in high school, you probably spent most of your childhood sucking down cherry Jolly Ranchers because you had the Bingo cards that were winners. I did not like Jolly Ranchers, which would explain nearly everything that happened to me in high school, but even if I did like Jolly Ranchers it wouldn’t have mattered because I was bad at Bingo. Now, of course, being “bad” at Bingo is like being “bad” at going to the bathroom: There’s no real conceivable way for it to be possible without considering very embarrassing social issues, and while I’m very sure that I had a plethora of social issues in elementary school, that didn’t seem to be the reason for my bad luck with Bingo. I could find what the teacher called out just fine, and I could recognize a straight line of torn up bits of paper with the best of ‘em, but my cards just never warranted a Bingo. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t win a single Bingo game in my entire educational career, always just coming close to the win and then watching Kyle, who probably grew a totally rad soul patch in like seventh grade, take it away from me. There came a time at which I was in it not for the prize, but just for the very sensation of winning at Bingo and knowing I wasn’t cursed.
Well, big news, everybody: It took me 19 years, but yesterday I won a freaking game of Bingo – and for a $650 jackpot, no less! It’s part of the halftime festivities at the UO basketball games, and a bunch of guys in the band bought Bingo cards, and I won! Me and about 50 other people. When the University mails me my check for $2, I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall. Bingo, like life, isn’t fair. It’s the one game you play in elementary school where there isn’t a happy, positive ending for everyone, and just when it looks like you’re going to win it, you with the funny name who’ll go on to be speech team vice president and band treasurer and the guy known for nothing more than his hair, somebody with a much more conventional and popular name will get there before you. But you keep playing Bingo, don’t you? Maybe it’s because they make you, but you keep playing Bingo.
Incidentally, last week somebody in the band won a $93 jackpot from Bingo. His name was Kyle.
Truman Capps would like to take a moment to commemorate his blog’s 1000th hit, which came from Ann Arbor, Michigan. If this particular reader would please send him his or her name, address, social security number, credit card information, and birth certificate, Truman will make sure to buy them something nice before leaving the country in his newly acquired zeppelin.