Joann Foley

I went to play bingo with my friend, Jackie, the other night.  It is the only chance I get to see her because she is a nurse and travels a lot in her job.

Bingo has come a long way since I started playing some 30 years ago.  I remember way back then we used either the slide type markers that were built into the cards or just plain see-through bingo chips.  A  few years later they came out with magnetic bingo chips.  These were simply the clear chips with a light-weight metal strip around them that you ran a magnetic wand over to collect the chips after each game (I wonder what ever happened to my very large collection of magnetic chips?).  Now we simply use paper cards (recycled, of course) and use water-soluble colored ink “daubers”  to cover each number.  Now, they have computers that you can purchase to play for the night.  It is quite expensive to play the computers though.  And, as I have found out from recent experience, using a computer does not increase your chances one bit.

I have to chuckle when I think about all those ladies that used to bring pictures of their children and grandchildren and display them for good luck; and then there were the ladies who brought the little dolls with the wild hair for luck.  They would set everything up on the table, surrounding themselves with all sorts of trinkets and pictures, in the hope that it would bring them good luck.  Quite comical now that I think about it.  I was never one to use any “good luck charms”.  If figured if I was meant to win that night, I would.

Well, Jackie and I did not win any money the other night.  I have decided that I will not be playing with the computers anymore.  I hope that our next bingo outing, we go every Tuesday night, will be more fruitful.