Bingo

Moving into the new job as Deputy DCO has its perks—hours slightly shorter, get to see the sun once in a while, people in high places getting to know who I am (not sure if that’s actually a perk or not). But it certainly had a price: screwing up before, all I had to do was answer to another Major with a “my bad” and it was taken care of. The other day I briefed a room with a lot of rank in it: a 3-star, 2-star, four 1-stars, twelve Colonels, about 15 Lt Col’s, and me and the other Major I brief with. Going with a “my bad” in that situation is not really an option. Another downfall is lack of interaction with anyone else. My buds and I on the night shift had become very close over the last couple of months. Now I’m in my own little cubby hole with not a whole lot of people to hang out with. So after work I go to the gym, and then go home for about 6 hours. Gets kinda boring.

To combat the boredom I’ve come up with a few activities—primarily watching TV series on DVD. My sister is in love with “Alias,” which I don’t get to see at home much due to the kids schedule and the fact that the 53” widescreen TV that was originally bought for some serious Playstation games now has “Spongebob Squarepants” and “Catscratch” permanently on it. So I started off by watching that and in the past couple of months have managed to see every single episode of the series (yes, that 126 episodes). To get me out the enlisted guys I work with convinced me, finally, last night to go out with them to the rec center for a game of Bingo.

Now I’ve never actually played Bingo before. They have it here like 6 times a week and they actually hand out some decent prizes. I heard they were giving away Playstation Portables, so I figured it would be worth a shot. The only problem is that, in my arrogance, every time I’ve seen a game going on (as I pass through to get my 1 of 3 gin and tonics of the day) I have always been amazed at the level of dorkness that permeated the room. So until last night, I avoided the activity like the plague. But in the interest of not becoming permanently attached to my bed (we don’t have chairs) I caved last night to the peer pressure. Good call.

I truly had a blast. First of all, my buddy and I had a great time making fun of the guy up front calling out the numbers, a Latino elderly gentleman who had a lisp. So when he would call “O Thixty Thix” we almost couldn’t mark it off because we were falling off of our chairs. Or when another guy would say “N, dinner for two,” and I would ask what number it was to find out that it was, in fact, “N 69,” the immature humor started to run rampant. In the end, I ended up winning a boom box on my first time out. I think I’m going to donate it to Toys for Tots, but it may have only a 220V plug on it. Maybe they have Toys for Tots out here in the desert.

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