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DONOFRIO: Bingo. I'd heard about it since I was nine or ten. I remember distinctly sitting on the sofa and closing my eyes hard, wishing, wishing that my mother would win some money. Once she actually won a hundred dollars, which to my mind was the same as ten thousand. It would change our lives, I was certain. It actually did for maybe a week. Usually harried and unhappy, my mother was light-hearted. She sang to the radio. She smiled.

FRIEND: Hello. Hi, How are you?

MOTHER: This is Sophie. My daughter Beverly. Hi.

DONOFRIO: It's Thursday. Bingo Night at the Polish-American Hall. We, my mother and I, are in my hometown of Wallingford, Connecticut. There are a lot of factories and car dealerships here. And women about my mother's age over sixty who have a thing for bingo. My mother plays three times a week. Tonight, she lays out fifteen dollars for bingo cards.

DONOFRIO: So what should I buy here?

MOTHER: I would just give her two of each. She's never played before so it's her first time.

DONOFRIO: Actually it wasn't my first time. I'd played before, once, five years ago, in a failed attempt to feel closer to my mother. I'd expected to find a room full of warm chummy older ladies trading stories about their grandkids. Boy was I off the mark. Bingo is a serious business; it spells money. The women, mostly ex-factory workers like my mother, had sat hunched over tables in a smoke-choked room concentrating hard as their arms flew across boards stretching two feet in both directions. When some poor woman yelled for the caller to please repeat a number, a bingo player at our table muttered "Tell her to turn her hearing aid up." I pled a headache and went home. I mean, these were grandmothers. Even my mother admits that her bingo cronies can be nasty.

MOTHER: Not all of them are rude, but the majority of them are.

MOTHER: This is my daughter Beverly.

FRIEND: Hi, Beverly.

DONOFRIO: Hi. How do you do?

MOTHER: So what's new?

FRIEND: I just brought my husband home from the hospital and I said let me get out of here.

DONOFRIO: This time the atmosphere is different. The people seem more social, the room not nearly so crowded or smoky. The big money games have moved to other clubs. The women who remain do so out of habit, or because they like the company.

CALLER: Good evening. Welcome to Thursday night at the bingo. First is the green quickie.

CROWD: Blue, blue, blue!

CALLER: Blue, blue. Sorry.

DONOFRIO: There are around forty women seated in clusters here and there at long cafeteria tables. On stage is an electronic bingo board and next to it is a box of bouncing ping pong balls.

CALLER: Seventeen. Twenty three. Seventy one.

DONOFRIO: The women have bags with "bingo" stenciled or embroidered across them. They carry their chips in plastic Tupperware containers. They line good luck trolls along the edge of their boards, and check the time on bingo watches. My mother's knowledge is incredible. She can predict the exact number that bingo will be called on every time. She's even right about Bertha, a woman who has a tendency to accidentally call bingo when she doesn't really have it. It happens on the very first game.

CALLER: Eighteen.

BERTHA: Bingo, bingo!

MOTHER: That's Bertha.

CALLER: No, it's fill the card, fill the card!

MOTHER: That's the woman I was telling you about.

DONOFRIO: My mother and her bingo partner Vivian pull magnetic wands from their bags and sweep up their metal chips.

MOTHER: They think we're nuts. They're laughing, you see! I'd like to see them at our age.

DONOFRIO: A few times my mother leans across and places a chip on a number I missed. There was a time not so long ago when her solicitousness would have driven me mad. I would have hissed "Mom, I can do it myself." Now it makes me feel looked after.

CALLER: Fifty-five.

MOTHER: Under G.

DONOFRIO: Under O?

MOTHER: G. Fifty five.

CALLER: Twenty.

MOTHER: I.

DONOFRIO: It's odd, but I was actually having fun. By the end of the evening I'd even won ten dollars. I'd groan with everyone else when someone yelled bingo, and didn't feel rude at all. I could imagine that if I'd never moved away, I might go with my mother once a week. I'd sit next to her with our arms touching like they were now. When I was little and my eyes rolled with every word out of my mother's mouth, when I made fun of her dress and imitate her speech, she'd turn to me and say "One day we will be best friends, you wait." It never happened. But I'll tell you, there's nothing like touching shoulders with someone who wants you to win as much or more than she wants to win herself. Except maybe touching shoulders with someone you feel the same way about. She may not be my best friend; she's closer than that. She's my mother.

CALLER: O sixty five.

PLAYER: Bingo!

Reporter: Beverly Donofrio / Producer: Dave Isay / Engineer: Caryl Wheeler.

"Thursday Night at the Bingo" premiered August 23, 1992, on All Things Considered. Copyright © 1992 Sound Portraits Productions. All Rights Reserved.

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This piece is available in the following audio formats [5:12 min]:
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		intro
		transcript

		"High-School Moms," Donofrio's report about a high school for teenage mothers
		"Big-Hair Contest," a radio short by Donofrio about Long Island girls with big hair
		Looking for Mary, a documentary by Donofrio about the Virgin Mary

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