Not My Scene. Not Not Not.

In my ongoing quest to be the Jane Goodall of suburbia, I went and played bunco with a bunch of strangers in my neighborhood. Bunco is a game played with dice, and according to wikipedia, is "popular particularly among middle-aged suburban women." Heh. I had no idea what this game was until last week. As Wikipedia explains:

As it is played today, Bunco is a social dice game involving 100% luck and no skill (there are no decisions to be made), scoring and a simple set of rules. Women who are part of a Bunco club take turns as the Bunco hostess, providing snacks, refreshments and the tables to set up the games. The hostess may also provide a door prize. Small amounts of money can be involved as well. The object of the game is to accumulate points and to roll certain combinations. The winners get prizes (provided by the hostess or pooled from the club resources) for accomplishments such as the highest score, the lowest score, or the most buncos. Prizes frequently center on themes associated with the game such as fancy dice, dice embedded in soap, t-shirts featuring illustrations of dice, etc. [emphasis mine]

Okay, already we can identify a problem with this pastime. Fancy dice? Dice embedded in soap? Please do not. Do not embed those things in that thing.

I was at my tennis lesson last week and another girl, Tonya, came up to me and said, "What are you doing tonight?" Now, I don't know her and had only exchanged pleasantries on the court. I felt slightly trapped--I like a softer come-on than that--but I came up with a clever answer. "Nothing," I said. She said, "Come and play bunco. We just started a new group and it's the first time we've gotten together." I didn't want to seem unfriendly, and I'm all about the neighborliness, so I said, "Okay!" I thought it might be fun. She told me the address and said to BYOB. So I did.

There were twelve women there, counting me. They were all basically strangers, except I'd met two of them before, sort of. It was interesting, because though we've lived here for a few years now and I'm acquainted with lots of people, I don't really know who knows who and what the networks of friends are. I am always fascinated by social groups and by figuring out how people are connected. Some of these ladies were friends, but it was a mixed and newly-assembled group. I also like to meet people, I have no problem being somewhere where I don't know anyone, I love games, and I like snacks. So why was this such a terrible time?

For starters, the game is deadly, deadly boring. It's not even a game, it's just taking turns. In each round, you're just trying to roll a certain number on the dice, and you get points for your successes. It's all chance. Very simple. Yet trying to get some members of this crowd to understand the rules was like explaining the plot of Memento to a bucket of chicken wings. Um, I say that in love?

So yeah, boring game. I know it's supposed to be about socializing rather than being all cerebral, but I think even if I'd been sitting at that table with my three best friends, I would have been like, "Can we at least play dominoes?" Because it wasn't so mindless, like something you do with your hands in a group--knitting or quilting or something--that it left your mind totally free to talk. You had to watch the dice and count points, so the presence of what little game structure there was just acted as an irritant.

And that would have been, well, okay I guess, if the people hadn't been 50% awful. How to explain? The other day the lovely Femme Follette said, of a gathering of good friends, that being with them was "like breathing pure oxygen." That struck a chord with me, because I always feel that way after being with people I truly like, or sometimes I feel as though I've been given nourishing food. Well. If the company of great people is like pure oxygen, then hanging out with these people was like breathing the air out behind a Greyhound bus station. A few of them were nice, in the sense that they knew the basic rules of meeting people in a social setting. Those rules boil down to only one: Thou Shalt Make a Fracking Effort. More of them did not get it. The hostess, Lynne, I would describe as chilly, except that even being "chilly" implies rather more social deliberation than I think she has at her command. The others were harmless, but nobody had any small talk, information, or much personality at all. I sound like a total bitch right now, but I promise you, my standards are not high.

One funny thing was that a few of the ladies were really confused about whether I was "tennis Becky" or "the other Becky, the one who has the Southern Living Home parties." I assured them I was not the other Becky, though I do know that Becky. One lady said, "Now who is she?" So I told her everything I knew about that other Becky, which happened to be a fair amount. She was like, "What does she look like?" So I described her. And then she said, "Why isn't she here?" And I had to confess that I had no idea. But that I was very sorry I wasn't her.

And yeah, I thought that my tennis teammate was asking me to join this bunco group. But she only invited me because they needed a sub. (You have to play with an exact number of people.) When I got there, she was passing around a schedule of their monthly gatherings, and it said, "If you are unavailable, you must get a sub for yourself." Then it had a list of "Substitute Players," and my name was on it. Um. What the hecks? So the next day Tonya from tennis emailed me and did NOT say, "Hey, I was glad you came last night, I had fun and I hope you did too." No. She said, "I lost your phone number and I need to add it to the sub list so could you email it to me?" And I ignored her.

Funny, when I told Normal Neighbor that Tonya had invited me to play bunco, Normal Neighbor made a little face. I said, "Do you know her?" She said, "No, but she's kind of rough." Only she meant "rough" in this sense that I'd forgotten it had. I don't know if my actual grandmother used to say that, or just the archetypal Southern Grandmother who speaks in my thoughts--the one who says "Only whores and children wear red shoes," that lady--but she meant "rough" not in the sense of "she looks bad," but like, "she's unrefined." Anyway, just a lexical sidebar. I'd forgotten that usage, but Normal Neighbor sometimes gives me back little bits of my linguistic upbringing, things I've forgotten in my wanderings around this great land. And with her usual Normal Neighbor perceptivity, she was right. Tonya is rough, and so are several members of the bunco sorority. Whatever, like I grew up in Buckingham Palace, but you know what I mean.

I would love to hear--let me rephrase, I would LOVE to hear--tales of your bunco experiences. If you have any. Surely some fun is being had with that activity. But I do not think I will partake again. OH, and Tonya, the girl who invited me, turned to me at one point in the evening and said, "So if you want to play more, you better keep the last Tuesday of every month clear, because I bet we'll always need a sub." Oh my dear, well when you put it that way! I'm seduced by your honeyed words!

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger the last few days! When life takes me away from you, Reader, I feel it most keenly. You give me fever, blog readers, fever all through the night.