Off-Campus Bingo!

For my off-campus event, I went to go play Bingo with Brady and Megan. When we got there, we were a little surprised by the people who were playing. We had originally planned to go to Sun City and play, so we were expecting a certain…uh…age of clientele. The people at Creekside Bingo were certainly far more varied in ages, as well as races, and social classes. The name of the Bingo place in it’s entirety was Creekside Charity Bingo, which I thought meant that the proceeds of the game were going to charity. Instead, to play the game, it cost 5 dollars, and the payout was huge- anywhere from 250 dollars to 750 dollars a hand. The game itself was the charity part of Creekside Charity Bingo. Most people in the hall were pretty intense upon the game; I’ve rarely felt so much tension in such a small space! We sat down at a table, completely mystified by what was taking place around us. People were stamping their cards faster than my eyes could follow. Even so, the woman next to us stopped stamping, and took us under her wing. She told us what we were to stamp, and the basic rules of the game. Between games, I went to go and get a coke, and I ended up talking to this woman. She had migrated from Houston to Round Rock following Hurricane Ike, and she had recently become immersed in the competitive world of Bingo. The place she had been staying at in Houston had been completely ravaged by Ike, and now she was living with friends in Round Rock. I could tell from her clothes that she wasn’t well off, and she, like many people around her, took the Bingo games and prizes very seriously. Though every person in the hall who I spoke to was incredibly nice, I couldn’t help feeling out of place, and a little awkward. I found myself hoping I wouldn’t win, because I really don’t need the money, and I would probably feel a little guilty if I did. I think its sad that I was unable to feel comfortable around the people in the hall, but it wasn’t an uncomfortableness sprung from fear or anything like that, but more of an awkward knowledge that I had so many more opportunities than most people in that room. I feel that our society sort of conditions people with more opportunities, to pity those who have less, and so the class differences become more apparent. I wish that people regardless of social class, or race, or gender, or sexuality, or any other characteristic could enter any situation and not feel like a different KIND of person. We are all essentially the same, just brought up in different kinds of circumstances.