Dignity… Bingo!

3Matt • 15th Dec 2009 • Life Lessons

People for whom English is a third language should not be Bingo callers, especially at retirement homes.

Tonight this happened and all but hell broke loose from the 90-somethings (doesn’t have quite the same ring as 20-somethings, does it?) that had paid their quarter to play two bingo cards for the evening.  Nobody could understand the sweet woman and she was constantly confusing herself about which letter/number to call, and she even threw one of the little balls partway across the room because she couldn’t read the lettering written on it.  You couldn’t write, cast, and direct anything this good… It’s just perfectly itself and it’s real.

Every Monday night my mom and dad go to this retirement home to visit my great aunt and play bingo and they basically administrate the whole evening.  I join them every few months or so to be a friendly and new face, and they seem to appreciate it.  The old lady who normally calls the bingo numbers is in the hospital and somehow the replacement was named with little forethought.  My dad ended up taking over for her  after two painfully slow and dissatisfying games (a French and German-speaking woman who grew up in a convent in Norway  70 years ago hollering across a big room in her non-native tongue to 25 seniors who have no problem hollering back, “We can’t understand you. You’re bad at this.”) and the flow of the night resumed.  What was interesting, though, was the way my dad handled it.

The woman was doomed from the start.  She had a very little chance at doing a sufficient job and this was apparent to most of the people in the room.  I talked with my dad afterward about his decision to not intervene in the two full games, and his response was simple.  The woman’s dignity was more important than the evening’s bingo.  She was somehow elected to the job, and was giving it her best.  She kept an amazingly positive attitude even amidst the snide remarks from her senile bingo-mates who lacked an “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” filter.  My dad gave her ample opportunity to receive constructive criticism and get better at the job, and then after the second game he walked to the front of the room and asked her politely “if he could be of any assistance.”  She responded with a  ”Yes.” and a joke (presumably) about needing to go out for a smoke, and this prevented constructive criticism from becoming hurtful criticism and the evening proceeded.  Had my dad stepped in when the woman was failing so miserably at the beginning she would have been a failure that had gotten the boot.  This way, she finished two games with a bit of dignity (she did get better at it… and she is in her 80s for goodness’ sake) and she’ll be able to say at the dinner table that she successfully (though maybe not gracefully) called two full games of Bingo.

The lesson to me, however, is that my dad did what the old folks could not: he correctly identified the most important aspects of the evening – dignity and respect – and acted in line with these in a way that delayed our evening of kick-ass, old-school bingo, but accomplished something so much more important than a game.  Thanks dad.