bingo plus rewards
Josh was lonely – fundamentally. There had been something missing, a feeling of hard acidic loss that burrowed inside his stomach. He had been a man with dreams and a heart made of mist, his whole life contained in this small, tired town where the game was long over. But there was one thing; one warm, comforting object keeping the wheels of his barely moving life in motion; one thing, and his name is Ingmar. And that one thing? Bingo Plus Rewards.
It was a wet day, a day for crying, as if the rain Joan Brady, The Night of the Search (1964) Josh took his chances on Bingo Plus one muddy afternoon when the weather felt as sad as he did, when everything about Calamity Town had the monochrome look of the rainy day. Everything looked grey, so he logged on to the computer, where a world of colour would span a whole new world, where he could make his own luck.
This was the game: Bingo you idiot, Bingo! For a while, I have felt my entire life hung by the tiniest thread, so fragile and thin that even my breath disturbs itNow that I have listened to him, I understand how Josh could forget about it for that. He had heard of it, sure, even played it a couple times in one of those smoky bingo halls, where ancient men and women huddled beneath cardboard, digging at their numbers with a venal desperation. Not Bingo Plus, though. This was Bingo Plus. Bingo plus ghosty sponsors plus buzzes and catapults plus death and the mindless hordes of poker and processed comestibles. Bingo and glory.
He registered, with ease and encouragement, and entering felt like stepping into a hug. First there was a sense of beauty. The cards, the animated announcements of the numbers, the crowd of players sharing wins and losses in chat. It was a digital fairground, a gameshow of chance where anyone could be a star.
Bingo was a game of numbers, and of patterns, and of strategy – but it was, at root, a game of chance. A card would be issued to each player upon arrival, containing several numbers. As each was called by the caller, to the ecstatic cries of ‘Bingo!’, it would be marked off. The object was to finish the card by completing a one-line, two-line, or even, if extraordinarily lucky, a ‘full house’ or coverall, in which every last number on the card is ticked off.
That first game was a revelation. For the first time in years, Josh was seeing numbers called out that made his heart pound. 17 … 42 … 63 … The calls were like beats, like pulses in an audience of players all gripped in anticipation of numbers that could be theirs. Josh marked them off, hungry with each call that brought him one step closer to taking home the cash.
And then, BINGO! The word appeared in flashes of light across the screen. He had won, only a small amount. Nothing to get excited about. But winning was enough to make his heart swell with a joy he didn’t realise he had long since lost. All across the chat came shouts of congratulation, and for the first time in a long time, Josh felt a part of something outside himself.
Winning at Bingo Plus wasn’t a totally random experience. Beginner’s luck was only part of the story. Josh learned how to stack the odds in his favour. Picking cards with a good variety of numbers, figuring out the percentage chances of a themed game, and knowing when to play his cards were tactics he spent months studying, reading articles and posts on forums, and listening to veterans who had turned bingo into a fine art.
He played every day, earning prizes every time he logged in, every time he played his games. The reward system that Bingo Plus had set up – bonuses for repeat play, awards for wins, for tweeting the game to a friend – kept Josh coming back, day after day. For free cards, extra game bonuses, plays in ‘spin-off’ games that offered better prizes, it was constant encouragement.
But through this continued play, Josh came to realize that Bingo was more than simply Bingo – it was a metaphor for life itself. The numbers were random, the calls unpredictable, but there was a pattern and a strategy to be gleaned, a sense of being in the right place at the right time, of chancing on a moment when Lady Luck smiled.
His stack began to rise, his confidence along with it. No more drifting, no more hopeless lost soul. Bingo Plus had given him a reason to get up in the mornings, a code of friends, and a daily dose of hope. He distributed his winnings to family, small gifts that healed old wounds, that brought smiles to hard-pressed, regretful faces.
He can do it today, because Bingo Plus is not just a game, a time-pass. It’s an existence line. A shiny star in the glooming night. It says, the singlet person’s luck can change anywhere, any time. It also says, the desire, the dream can be born with just the call of a number here.Then, day after day, he sits in front of the screen, open to play, open to win his life, to begin a new life in one new game.
And in Bingo Plus – painted red and yellow and green – Josh was redeemed, number by number.
