August 5, 2015 Article

Old Coot Bingo

By Merlin Lessler

There’s a hip little game going on in secret, in corporate meeting rooms, according to Marilyn Katzman in a recent New York Times article. It doesn’t have an official name, but you could call it, “Corporate-talk” Bingo. Participants have a Bingo-like card hidden in the scramble of official looking paperwork in front of them at the conference table. The bingo cards contain buzzwords instead of numbers and overused acronyms and convoluted sayings, often heard in corporate environments. Stuff that often disguises the real meaning, like “downsizing” and “rightsizing” instead of layoffs and firings, or a “bilateral” meeting with the boss instead of a one-on-one.  And, well worn phrases: At the end of the day. – The bottom line. – Caught between a rock and a hard place and a new one on me, “bandwidth,” as in,  “Do you have enough bandwidth to help me?” Instead of, “Do you have time to give me a hand?”

When you are in a long boring meeting and hear one of these words or phrases, you mark off the appropriate square on your card. If you mark five squares in a row, side-to-side, up and down, or on a diagonal, you’re supposed to stand up and yell, “Bingo!” That’s what the rules call for, but smart workers, who don’t want to be “right-sized,” stay seated, cover their mouth and fake a cough that sounds like, “Bingo.” 

I noticed a similar thing the last time I was at the dinner table with some of my grandchildren. Every once in a while, one of them would pop up and yell Bingo. The rest of them would crack up and giggle. It wasn’t until I read Katzman’s article that I figured out what they were up to; they were playing another kind of bingo, Old Coot Bingo.

Whenever I said, “Back in the day,” or “When I was a kid,” their heads went down, a pen came out, and a box was marked on their game cards. Sometimes, I get on a roll and broadcast a slew of “What’s his names” – “Whatch-ya call its” – “Thing-a-ma-jigs” and other crutches, to cover a memory lapse. Old Coot Bingo cards have those words too.

But, Old Coot Bingo goes beyond memory loss and back in the day stuff. The cards also contain medical words frequently used by old coots: hip replacement, stent, foot neuropathy, leg cramps and the like. So much of our conversations are loaded with these words it makes us fair game at family gatherings. A Thanksgiving dinner looks like a table of jack-in-the-boxes, with a kid jumping up every few minutes to yell, “Bingo!” Next year, I’m going to Howard Johnson’s by myself. If I can find one. They used to be all over the place. “Back when I was a kid!”