Nunavut

And so the addiction begins…with a little taste of winning glory…..

The plan was to corrupt, I mean introduce, another coworker to bingo last Friday. He’d never played, is up here alone, and he seems to have an open attitude so I thought it would be fun. My boss agreed to host us and so it was set. Well, the newcomer backed out and, on autopilot, I still found myself walking to the radio station to get a bingo card. It wasn’t until I was walking home that I thought, “Why did I buy this? I am tired and the only reason I was gonna play this week was to show my coworker.” Oh well, if you have a card, you gotta play!

This week it was different. The bingo caller was a native English speaker and was calling in English. However, she was going WAY too fast and I was getting irritated. She was taking all the fun out of the dobbing experience. I couldn’t even rearrange myself in my seat much less take a drink before she was on to the next number. I decided I needed to call the radio station and tell her to slow down. That’s when we realized we didn’t have the number for the radio station; the number listed in the phone book did not dial to the station. Hmmmm…..I scour all 200 entries for Igloolik backwards and forwards. In this town, you can literally read each and every entry in the phone book! Lol. I found nothing. I was getting very agitated now because my boss was having to do both my card and his while I was fiddling with the phone book. Now, I don’t want to say anything bad about his bingo skills since he was kind enough to take over, but let’s just say, missing numbers is not unheard of on his cards. Finally, we both got the idea at the same time to randomly call another coworker and ask for the radio station’s number…cause of course we can find HIS number in the phone book but not the radio station’s. So that is what I did…called him, out of the blue, slightly frantic and explained that I needed the radio station number so I could ask the caller to slow down bingo. Isn’t that what you did last Friday night? Sure enough, he recited the number from memory off the top of his head and I made my call just as the last game was starting. The last game is the Jackpot round where you have to dob all of the numbers on the bingo sheet to win.
The caller had slowed down. It was much more relaxing. I even had time to check over my numbers and take a sip of my drink every so often. As the game continued, I noticed that one of my cards was getting full so I double-checked to make sure I hadn’t missed any numbers. Sure enough, I had and that left me with only 2 empty spaces. The caller called the next number and it was one of mine. I was down to one. Never happens. Sure enough, the next number wasn’t mine and I knew I had lost because if I’M down to one space then someone, somewhere else, has been down to one space for probably several rounds. But, lo and behold no one called in and when the caller called the next number, my mouth actually dropped open. I stared at my now completely covered bingo card in disbelief. I looked at my boss and his mouth was kinda gaping too with a look of “is this for real?!” I echoed his thoughts and said, “Holy shit, is this for real??!!!” “Oh my god! I’ve got a bingo!! I gotta call the station! Thank god I persevered to find the number earlier!!!” I was shaking and nervous because you have to call in and the whole town can hear you saying your numbers. What if I was wrong?? I was gonna sound like such an idiot. I called all of them and it was a good bingo! I won the JACKPOT! They told me to come down to the station to pick up my winnings and I hung up. Immediately, I began jumping up and down and whooping. You see, this jackpot was no measly $20. No my friends. I was the sole winner of TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!! Two grand! Can you believe that??!! My god! That’s serious money. I screamed at my boss, “Go start your ATV, I gotta go get my money!”
He was driving a bit fast and loose over to the station for my liking and I yelled to not murder me on my big win night. To which he replied, “Oh no, definitely not, I’m gonna wait until you have the money in hand.” Hahaha.
My winnings were disbursed in all 20 dollar bills. Has anyone actually carried around 2 grand in 20’s? It’s um, how shall I say, very rapper-esque. I felt like I need to have some gold chains on my neck and a rubber band in my pocket to hold my bank. Hilarious.
The JACKPOT I say! I still can’t believe it.
I promptly sent my coworker that decided not to play a text message explaining how he’d missed out big time on bingo night. Now we’ll never win anything again.Read more