Bingo
After spending the entire day walking back and forth from town, clearing up after people, re-filling the washing machine and tumble dryer, and putting things away after everybody else, I really didn’t feel like going out to our youngest’s school this evening to attend a school fundraiser. I get it – spending an evening playing bingo in the school gymnasium seems like brilliant fun to the children, but after a stressful week at work it was the last thing I wanted to spend my Saturday evening doing.
It’s done now – we’re home, and my pockets are empty of quite a considerable sum of money that we really couldn’t afford to lose. I get it though – with funding of schools falling every year, the parents are asked to contribute – with their contributions going towards projects and programmes not covered by the national curriculum. School trips, library books, and so on.
To combat our losing run, and the rapidly depleting mood of our children, I started thinking outside the box.
While quietly sitting, pressing the special bingo pen into the numbers on the sheets, I began whispering “I got that one!”, “I got that one too!”, “AND that one!”. The children caught on pretty quickly (we have the same stupid sense of humor), and began doing the same. Before we knew it, we were laughing so much we almost missed several numbers – resulting in a look from my other half that could probably have rivalled Elsa’s ice-generating antics in “Frozen”.
After calming down somewhat, Miss 14 began losing things – or rather, every time she turned around, I silently removed something from the table in front of her. At first she didn’t notice, much to the amusement of Miss 12. She certainly noticed when her pen and bingo paper vanished. As she turned and reached for the non-existent pen, Miss 12 exploded in laughter.
I love how children try to invent their own jokes too. Miss 14 had a packet of chewy sweets hidden in her pocket, and swore blind that she wasn’t eating them – despite not being able to open her mouth to answer my questions. While she thought I wasn’t looking, she tried to throw one into her mouth – and I caught her – mouth wide open, fingers stuffed between her teeth. We got told off for laughing again.
I think perhaps the most entertaining win of the night was a little girl who’s family obviously filled out a bingo card for her – she screamed “BINGO!” at the top of her voice, and skipped all the way from her table to the bingo caller – giggling as she went, and ticket held high in the air. The only problem was she wasn’t about to let go of the ticket to have it checked – it took all the skills of a member of school staff to persuade her that they were not stealing her ticket.