Many of us had to read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson in high school. The story, published in 1948, describes a peaceful American town that once a year takes part in a barbaric lottery to determine which lone citizen will be stoned to death.
Just as the amicable people of this town become cold blooded killers during lottery time, so do the students of Saint Anselm become flesh-hungry vultures during the even more barbaric and bone-chilling ritual of CABingo.
As a school that offers so much charity and good will, it seems mathematically fitting that Saint Anselm should tri-annually sponsor an event that balances out all of the good done in the world by creating more hatred in one hour than most civilizations manage to in hundreds of years.
Upon entering CABingo, students descend from the dignified lives of college academics into a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which they must fight to the death over the last Keurig on Earth.
Were one to stumble into CABingo midway through, they would arrive to a scene similar to that of British Parliament.
They would hear threats that decent people would never wish upon their worst enemies, unless those enemies had that iHome that is apparently now made of diamonds.
What causes these usually docile people to descend into madness is nothing more than untamed greed.
It’s the same reason you buy five bags of Goldfish for the price of three at Costco, because it’s two more bags of Goldfish than you would have had!!
No you don’t need that rice cooker, but you can literally increase the amount of rice cookers you have by 100%!!
Besides you really don’t eat enough rice.
While it would appear that the victims of this cruel system would be the losers, who have by the end of the game learned the true meaning of emotional turmoil, (as Bane said in The Dark Knight Rises, there can be no despair without hope) it is the winners at whom this hatred is directed.
As someone who recently, in the most triumphant moment of his life, won a round of CABingo, I can say from experience that the sea of angry faces looking at me on stage made my soul hurt-a little.
This is all not even to mention the game’s most tragic victim, the bingo caller, who for all her efforts to help the Campus Activities Board may as well have killed Bambi. If the devil himself were to take form on the stage he would not suffer as much scrutiny as the CABingo caller does, just as long as he called B7.
The truth is that we all like to think that we’re good hearted people, with pure intentions and motives.
And while this may be true most of the time, these principles go right out the door when we are given a card with a bunch of numbers on it and the opportunity to win a free toaster.
For the sake of Saint Anselm College, nay, the world, the barbaric practice of CABingo should be abolished, all of its materials should be placed in the giant warehouse from Indiana Jones, and it should never be spoken of again.
But not really because I won Wedding Crashers and I love CABingo.