My first ever bingo memory was a 4 days holiday back in
1980. My father worked for a big public transportation
company and his branch had this fine holiday in a town I
even don't remember the name, all I remember it was near a
beautiful lake. The last day at the afternoon, all the
employees gathered to play bingo in a nice hotel hall and we played bingo.
That was the first time I actually saw my parents playing
bingo, I knew they were playing bingo from time to time but
I remember the excitement I felt before the game started,
for me it was the highest pick of the whole trip.
That was no money bingo, it was play for prize bingo, at
that day, my parents gave me 1 of their bingo cards, I
remember I kept on praying the whole time, it was so
important to me, I really wanted to win, 5 year old boy
whose greatest desire at that day to win the superb prizes
on stake. The first few games, my parents didn't win a
single prize, I was so sad almost cried when I saw my
father's colleagues picking up their winning prizes and
than, out of the blue at the 4th game, I realized I am
winning this game, I was too shy to shout it out, a boy in
the realm of adults and my mom noticed that and shouted out
loud B I N G O, she told me it's my winning and we walked
out proudly together to pick up the prize, it was a Swedish
cookie machine with the blue and yellow colors of Sweden.
those were a hit in the 70-80th and as a boy who loves to
eat cookies, I couldn't ask for more.
that Swedish cookie machine followed me all of my
childhood as I was helping my mom making those nice butter
cookies until I was 12 (usually in the winter times). Every
time my mom and I were preparing the dough, we mentioned
it's all coming from the prize bingo at 1980.
The game went on and my dad won a big brown jerrican,
each time we went to a picnic or to the beach, the jerrican
was there fully of cool water or lemonade. Both prizes are
long gone, guess my parents got rid of them when I was a
teenager.
My second early bingo experience is when I was 12 years
old, my parents took us kids to a cruise, one of the nicest
activities was bingo, well my dad also visited the casino
but I was too young to join him :-)
The cruise ship was nothing fancy, I remember we joked
about it and named her Exodus. It was a Greek cruise ship,
the staff members were all Greek, they had an ok english but
we laughed out hearts out from time to time in secret. The
cruisers were half British and half Spanish because it
stopped in Barcelona on the 3rd day and many Spanish
cruisers joined in.
The bingo was so funny, the Greek staff member kept
confusing the numbers, he called them up in 3 languages,
Greek, English and Spanish at this order. The caller mixed
up the numbers really nice, a typical bingo call was (1
ball):
I19 (Greek)
I23 (in English) and I45 in Spanish
Well none of my family spoke Spanish, we were aware of
that because a guy who sat next to our family understood all
3 languages and he told us the caller was kept on mixing up
the numbers also because every 15 seconds someone yelled B I
N G O. The caller checked the bingo card and said your
numbers are not matching. It was a total chaos and totally
funny bingo experience, I remember I felt both relived and
sad when the game was over, hey we haven't won anything at
that bingo cruise.
