Brawl At The Bingo

The 'rents and I spent a fun-filled evening at one of our sister VFW post's bingo last night.  This VFW is very cool - it's across from the Longfield Avenue entrance to Churchill Downs.  The members there are very sweet and hardworking people, and they run a pretty good bingo.  It's very old school - in that they still use the hard cards and bingo chips.  To me, as a bingo player, that's way more fun than using the daubers.  And it's less messy, too; everybody that plays bingo with the daubers always comes home with ink on their hands, arms and sleeves.  But I digress.  It's not often that the 'rents want to go to bingo - Dad likes it, but doesn't like to breathe in all of the second hand smoke; Mom just doesn't like to lose her money.  And I have to agree with her on that one.  But last night they wanted to go for some reason.  So we all piled in the Odyessy after supper and headed over by the track. 

We got there about a half hour before the games started, and picked out a so-called lucky table and then we played.  I put the 'rents on each side of me so I could watch their cards and help them out.  They both kept up like professional bingo players, and even though we didn't win a dime, we came close almost every game.  We were down to the last game of the evening, the big money "winner take all" game.  By this time, we'd been there for three hours and the room was so smoke-filled you could have cut the smoke with a knife.  As soon as we got home, we all took our coats off and left them on the back porch to air out.  But once again, I digress.  Back to the game commentary.  The bingo caller (a substitute caller, in fact) called N34, and a man a few tables over from us yelled "bingo."  Well the substitute caller was in her 80's and was a little overwhelmed with the whole calling experience, and she didn't hear the man, so she goes on and calls the next number, B12.   By now, people all over the hall are yelling "He called bingo" but she still didn't hear, and a woman sitting in our row of tables yells "bingo."  The battle lines had been drawn -- half the people were yelling "he called bingo first" and the other half were yelling "the caller didn't hear so she (meaning the B12 winner) should win."  People started getting up out of their seats and stomping their feet and were yelling even louder.  The three of us grabbed our bingo chips and put on our coats and we ran out of the door before the chairs started flying, as has been known to happen in the past under similar circumstances. 

This scenario never happened while I was a bingo caller, thank goodness, but if it had, I would have simply split the pot with the two players.  But not the case last night - they ended up paying the N34 winner the whole amount.  The 'rents worked at our post's bingo this morning, and they said about half the people there this morning were at last night's bingo brawl and that they were still talking about it.  There were no reports of chairs being thrown last night, but several chairs were overturned.  If I hear any more reports of damage or violence, I'll be sure to let you know.