I Finally Win Something! And It's THIS!

Good grief.

Cute got us tickets the other night to the sold-out performance/game of Drag Queen Bingo at (The Original) Key West Theater. 

Other than a charity night at Proud Mary's, I haven’t played Bingo for a l-o-n-g time and certainly not exactly this kind. I know many people play at churches and other places for charity and I’m pretty sure this was not that. For starters, it took nearly two hours to play six games. If the “host(ess)” had not been reminiscing about things that may or may not have ever happened, or making so many (raunchy to down-out dirty) jokes and call-outs, it would have been done in 30 minutes, max.  But that is what people came for. However, I'm not sure we had full knowledge prior. 😊

They definitely didn’t come for the history lesson I found in Wikipedia.  Bingo has been around forever, well, since the 1500s, in one form or another.  It was called lotto, then Tombola with a different format in Italy.  The French game Le Lotto appeared in 1778, featuring 27 squares in a layout of three rows and nine columns. Five squares in each row had numbers ranging from 1 through 90, which led to the modern design.

Later, in the nineteenth century, a game like this was widely played in Germany to teach children spelling, animal names, and the multiplication tables. Not sure how that worked but it had to be Germany.

Without all the details, a rule book was published in the U.S. in 1933 and a game called Beano loosely based on those rules had been popularized.  Obviously, dry beans were used as tokens.  Enthusiasm for the game increased during the Great Depression as well as much later during the Covid Depression where on-line variations abounded.

So, there we were in this wonderful little “theater” where we’ve been for other kinds of entertainment. It was crowded and people were in a good mood. Everyone listened for their numbers to be called, for a square bingo, a horizontal one line bingo (the statistically easiest to win), or vertical or diagonal.  Thankfully, a full card bingo was not on tonight's game list. 

This was to the regret of the confused couple near us who didn’t follow directions. They proceeded to turn down the tabs on all their bingo numbers (on all six cards) and call Bingo! in the first round.  The host(ess) was kind and told them they won and gave them a prize as well.  The second time they called out Bingo! before even five numbers were called, the crowd booed and kindly laughed, however no prize was awarded to them this time.  They sat quietly through the rest of the night.

I was stunned, truly floored, when the stars aligned and I had a bingo on my diagonal line. The only other thing I’ve ever won in my lifewas a six-pack of Coke.  I won’t describe this prize but I can say it was unusual, unusable, and unexpected, even for a drag queen bingo. You can arrow > below to see it if you like.

 (Ha. You did, didn't you?)

But I wouldn’t invite me to a party where we’re playing Dirty Rotten Santa or White Elephant in the near future.