By Shannon Williams
In my pre-retirement life, Sunday afternoons were a whirlwind of things that needed to be done to start the week off. I often did a bunch of cooking, got the wash finished up and tried to take care of any personal business I might need to take care of. But, with retirement, I can do those things anytime and they don’t have a time frame or deadline much anymore! My husband has a big job each Sunday afternoon, he has to watch golf, baseball, NASCAR, and football later in the summer. It is a tough job, but he manages to get it done, thus he watches TV all Sunday afternoon and while I like to watch some sports, I have never wanted to spend my entire Sunday afternoon watching it.
I needed something to do. I think I have worked though my sleeping phase of retirement, which is what I did most of the first couple of months. I have always loved to play Bingo, but have not gone much as an adult, primarily due to the smoking in most bingo halls. I always play when I take a cruise, but had yet to make it to the Eagles to play on Sunday afternoon. Over the years, I have met people who would invite me to come and play and I always told them I will someday, well someday was Sunday!
My neighbor, Teri and I had talked about going to play Bingo for more than a few years, so we made our plan to go and check it out. I have to tell you, I had a ton of fun! We checked our best information source (Facebook) and planned to have some fun. We were not sure what to expected, but figured we could follow the lead of others and not embarrassed ourselves!
We arrived and found the bingo room, and found a friend! She took us up to buy our needed items and informed them we were new and thus they jumped into action explaining what our options were and what the different cost were. We decided on the basic $40 package, which would give us cards for all the games, including the early bird and several special games (note, they only take cash). I had found some old bingo markers from one of my cruise trips, so we did have some of the needed tools. We were given a ticket for door prizes and all of our paper bingo cards. The best thing we got was an instruction sheet which listed all of the type of games that would be played along with pictures of what the bingo should look like. We sat down with Barbra, who is a friend and long-time bingo player (side note, I met Barbra when I volunteered for Crab Fest, one of the many benefits of being a volunteer is meeting new friends!!). She explained how it all worked and we did our best to understand. Each game is a different type of bingo, some games have wild numbers, some don’t. She gave us lots of hints and tricks about marking the cards to go along with the game we were playing. She explained about the door prizes and the bingo prizes!
Also sitting near us was Phyllis and at times it took both Barbra and Phyllis to help us LOL! They both were so sweet and really made what was sometime confusing just FUN! I was amazed at the number of cards they were playing and they could look over and see numbers we might have missed!! Most of the games paid the winner $100 ($95 once the taxes were taken out) but a few games the prize was based on how many people were playing that day. Of course if more than one person wins, the prize is split. In the past, a bingo would have to be confirmed by someone calling out all the numbers on the card, but now it is all done by computer. All the bingo helper has to do is give the caller the card number and they can confirm if it is a good bingo.
They have sweet ladies who will take your drink and food order as you play, so all your needs are met. I got lost a few times, but the girls got me back on track. Some of the game had several wild numbers and one time it was all of the even numbers! It does make it fun and changes it up. There were several breaks and during the breaks the door prizes were awarded. Most were baked goods, or snack food with a few little small gifts in the mix, too. I was lucky enough to win some homemade bar cookies and they were delightful. I say ‘were’ as they did not last long. During one of the breaks we were all offered a brownie!! Wow
The system that they have shows you what numbers have been called and what the upcoming number will be. I had to finally stop looking at that and just focus on the number the caller was calling. I got close to a bingo a few times, but it was not meant to be for me, but my neighbor had a lucky day, as she won the last blackout game!!! She did not get it in the limited number of balls called to win the big $1500 jackpot, but she won $500! Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.
How could you not have fun, you have drinks, treats, friends, and a chance to win money and all the while you are supporting the Eagles and all they do in the community. They awarded two young ladies’ scholarships that very afternoon!
So, get out of your chair on a Sunday afternoon and have some fun, I sure did, but it took me long enough.
