by Amy Abbott

I called my first Bingo game today at a senior citizens center in a  test of the part of my brain that does numbers. Did I mention I don’t do math?

Calling Bingo requires reading in clear language (good – that talking thing ) and using numbers appropriately (bad – that spatial reasoning thing.)

The game room temperature was a balmy 108 degrees when I arrived early. On this hot June day, the room was filled with about 30 seniors in sweaters. This is incompatible with hot flashes and my sweaty nervousness about managing numbers in public. I am too old for this, and there’s not enough caffeine to make me put on a happy face.

I put prizes purchased at the neighborhood dollar store on the prize table. Game winners could choose among the lovely parting gifts, including hand lotion, sugarless candy, nail clippers, a dish towel, storage bins, a flashlight, Groucho Mask, a toothbrush, combs, a screwdriver, a bird feeder, bunny ears, gum, and other eclectic worthless junk. The grand prize was a ten-dollar Walmart card.

Did I mention the Groucho Mask and bunny ears? I thought these festive items would add a laugh and some fun. I’ve never been more wrong.

At 2 p.m., sixty eyes shot death-ray daggers at me. These folks were ready to go. B I N G O.

The little white numbered balls rest in a gold apparatus resembling a wire birdcage. As the caller, I spin the widget, and six or seven white balls drop into an open chute. I read the number and placed the used ball on a vast white grid with all the numbers and letters. That’s how it is supposed to work.

Some of us are good at math and science.

These people are called “doctors” and “engineers.” When they see a group of numbers on a page or balls on a grid, they see the theory of relativity, a chemical chain, and nuclear fission.

Some of us are good at creative pursuits.

As a result, we are called “sales reps” or “unemployed.” Those in the second group are fond of saying, “Which of Leonardo da Vinci’s skills would you eliminate, the math and science or the art?” This philosophical axiom makes for an exciting and provocative cocktail party comment or something to ask the next person at the unemployment line.

When I see numbers on a page, I think of a Jackson Pollock painting. Not a connoisseur of the famous abstract artist? Think simply of numbers completely jumbled on a page or the math section of the SAT. I see both the same.

My transition from old to new math in the early elementary grades precluded me from understanding mathematics. President Kennedy wanted everyone to study math and science “so we can put a man on the moon by the end of this century.” That messed me up. I started first grade with old math, and by the middle of second grade, new math burned past me like a Saturn 5 rocket to the moon.

I’m watching numbers spin by on this wheel through bifocals. After spinning the machine, one needs to peer through the top of the glasses to read the number.

“B—fourteen. B – fourteen.”

Next ball.

“N – forty-one. That’s N, four one.”

“N – thirty-eight. N — three eight.”

“You’re saying them too fast, honey,” boomed Alma from the front table, “Slow down.”

I was crawling along, but Alma straightened me out.

I used my bifocal to read the number and switched to the regular lens to see the cut-out grid for the ball. The back and forth made me nervous and a little dizzy.

I have to sound out the numbers in my head. “Zero, sixty-eight.”

Madeline, in the back row, quickly corrected me. “It’s, Ohhhh, not zero.”

(I felt like she wanted to say an expletive at me, such was her disdain.)

Seven balls fill the chute. Then I spin again. Too many balls come out if I do not have the right touch on the wire cage. I spin the cage too fast, and four balls fall and bounce on the floor. I chase after them. Each ball rolls in a different direction, and I bend over to pick up the ball, sending my rear end up in the air. My knees crack as I lean over. What a joy this is!

Everyone laughs each time I bend over, those perverse people. Were they laughing at my rear end, my cracking knees, or my dropping the balls?

“I’m winning them over,” I thought.

“Sorry, folks, I have the first-time jitters.”

“Move on with it, girly-girl” said a man in the back wearing a WWII hat.

“What branch of service were you in?” I asked. “God bless you for your service to our country.”

He said, “Battle of the Bulge.”

“Let’s give him a hand,” I asked the group to applaud this old soldier.

No one applauded.

The man said, “Now, can you just move on?”

As the games progressed, I got better. I did not drop any more balls, but I needed help remembering if this was game one or two. (This is easily explained. As a post-menopausal woman, I have less estrogen than the old Battle of the Bulge soldier. This causes brain farts.)

Was it time to clear the board? Or did we clear it?

I made a joke out of it. “I’m having trouble remembering which game we are on. No one wants me to play cards with them; I’m easily distracted.”

“Cut out the jokes and move on,” said the man in the WWII hat.

He was my favorite.

After I verified the win, each winner stepped up to the prize table and took a prize. Unfortunately, the Groucho mask and the bunny ears may have been covered with bubonic plaque germs. They did not move.

“How about some bunny ears for the grandchildren?” I said, as two winners “bingo-ed” at the same time.

Ellen used a walker and sported shiny pink hair, said, “My grandchildren have their own grandchildren,” and took some mint dental floss.

I want to finish this endless hell.

And we’ve only completed four games, but it feels like I’ve been here since 7 o’clock this morning. We are at game four because I struggled to count the prizes. I bought twenty-five. I can leave when five remain.

Wait — there is the Grand Prize, a ten-dollar card to Wally World.

I am almost finished. I am spinning the birdcage apparatus and hear Alma and her friends talking about me. They think they are whispering, but they are less than six feet away from me, and I hear every word of their acerbic diatribe.

“She isn’t funny. So why does she keep telling those jokes?”

I want to scream, “Ladies, I can hear EVERY WORD YOU ARE SAYING,”

Instead, I say, “I – nineteen, I nineteen.”