FRICTION FICTION
Bingo Bust-ups and Mud Massacres
When feuding grannies get down and dirty
“Bingo!” she screeched.
“Bitch!” I muttered, not for the first time that year. I was growing dreadfully sick of Gran Esme and her bingo-winning streak.
Disgruntled, I sat back in my chair and scrutinised the old bag.
‘Bingo! Bingo!” she called, waving her scrawny arms, orange bingo dauber clutched in one knobbly fist, bingo card in the other. “Here, here! I’m over here!”
The crazy woman looked like a demented semaphore operator attempting to avert a catastrophe.
Moans and groans echoed throughout the bingo hall.
Groups of wrinkled, past-their-use-by-date cronies muttered their disapproval over the wretched woman; winner of the ten-dollar prize money. Again!
Others grimaced in disappointment, as they screwed up their used cards and flung them on the floor in an act of senior defiance. One disproportionately upset, wizened grandpa stomped on his spectacles repeatedly, blaming his lack of bingo performance on his macular issues.
Another spat disgustedly, accidentally propelling his upper dentures into the partially filled coffee cup of the uptight elderly crone seated opposite. With great purpose and a dainty pinch, Gran Stick-Up-Her-Bum fished the prosthesis out of her cold beverage and then hurled it back across the table.
Adjusting her triple string of cultured pearls over the ruffled neck of her mauve twin-set, she sat back, smugly satisfied.
Things were beginning to escalate rapidly. Mutters were turning to fully vocalised abuse, mainly aimed at the bingo caller; canes were being brandished.
In a blind rage, I pushed back my chair. Like fingernails scraping down a blackboard, the resultant noise of wood on polished concrete produced further snarly complaints, whilst permanently petulant Maurice silently clutched at his chest and flopped headfirst into his plate of cold chips and congealed gravy.
People of our age are slow to react in emergencies. They like to sit awhile before calling for help, just in case the victim has merely nodded off or dementia has temporarily disabled their motor neuron responses — nobody wants to appear like a Nervous Nellie.
When “a situation” has finally been established, we need a respectable lag time to negotiate our phones. Young people don’t get how tricky it is to poke numbers with rheumaticky fingers that point east and west instead of north. That is, if we even remember that our emergency number is triple zero, not 911 or even 111 which is a problem for our masses of Kiwi ̶i̶g̶n̶o̶r̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ immigrants.
I used the lull in proceedings to storm Gran Esme’s table.
Brandishing my orange bingo dauber, I raised it high over her head and thrust it down onto the table.
All conversation in the room ceased. The crackle of sudden breaths through lungs riddled with emphysema were the only sounds in the room.
Rickety necks were craned as their owners strained to see the action.
Metaphorical gloves in the form of bingo markers had been thrown down! A mud-slinging duel had been challenged!
Crisscrossed bingo daubers had signalled an imminent battle; a fight until one chronic ailment or another disabled one of the participants.
And so it was that a Gran-to-Gran mud fight in the Bingo Bust-ups bog hole behind the Codgers’ Senior Citizens Club was scheduled for the morrow’s dawn.
It was decided by the Dueling Seconds that “dawn” would hereinafter be known as eleven-thirty am on account of the difficulty in getting the participants there at an earlier hour, let alone any spectators who would travel via Codgers’ Complimentary Bus Service.
The local CWA also referred to as the Stitch and Bitch Club, agreed to provide thermos tea plus scones with jam and cream. Spectators who preferred butter, as well as jam and cream would have to provide their own on account of the limited financial resources of the Association. New-fangled, environmentally friendly, bamboo knives would not be available for the same reason.
Paramedics were on standby, set up under a pergola on grassy ground at the edge of the bog hole. There was always the possibility of a medical emergency which was just as likely to occur among the onlookers as the participants.
I was kitted up and ready to rumble, dressed in my gold lamé swimsuit, still emotionally fired up from the bingo hall incident the previous day.
It was a pre-requisite rule that both duelers were first examined by paramedics for any untoward symptoms that might cause an unfair disadvantage.
I think they rushed my prelim.
My paramedic, aged at least twenty-five, kept screwing up his nose and dry-retching, muttering something about mummified remains and how he couldn’t get a pulse.
Esme hadn’t yet arrived.
I was beginning to think I might win by default when a buzz of excitement ran through the crowd.
Pushing through a throng of over-excited pensioners, she swept in wearing a goddamn pink cape over the top of a ruby-red swimsuit.
Bugger the woman! Why hadn’t I gone for a bit more costume drama? She had become the crowd favourite!
The cape tie around her neck had expertly been keeping everything in place. When she undid the neck ribbon, all sorts of wrinkly bits slumped south, causing a new fit of retching hysterics from the kid paramedic.
I felt I had been awarded a small victory until a chorus of wolf whistles and inappropriate cheering arose from the crowd.
“Whoop, whoop, Esme!”
“You go, you slinky minx!”
“You can put your Homypeds under my hydraulic lift bed anytime, baby!”
“Don’t let that lump of lard, Raine, get under your girdle!”
That did it! My blood pressure rose to 90/45. Esme was going to eat mud if I had to sit on the miserable wretch and hold her face under.
My feverish mind ran over the Marquee of Queensland rules for mud wrestling and decided that my intended tactics were legit. That broad’s goose was severely cooked!
Our usual bingo caller had been assigned to provide commentary for the wrestling match which was to be broadcast on Wrinklies 100FM.
“Ladies and … gentleman …” I guessed he had noticed how few men survived into their old age. “The match is about to begin. Gran the Loser, Raine, get to the blue corner marked accordingly at the bog hole. Gran the Victorious, Esme, when you feel up to it, please make your way to the red corner. If either of you needs assistance at any time, raise your right hand. No need to call, Bingo! Hahahaha,” he guffawed.
Proudly holding my head up, shoulders back, walking as tall as a bent, arthritic spine would allow, I marched to my corner. The crowd was ominously quiet. I threw my arms triumphantly into the air, the way I’d seen professional wrestlers do before a match. To my dismay, the loose skin on my upper arms waved around like frickin’ flags. A burst of laughter rippled through the crowd.
I heard fresh retching from the paramedic shelter.
Damn, I forgot about the tuck-shop-arm phenomenon; my arms had been wrapped securely within firm, three-quarter sleeves for decades.
Quickly bringing my arms down to more favourable gravity, I scanned the surrounding area for any sign of Esme. Damn the woman, where was she?
I was standing ankle-deep in mud, a blush of embarrassment rising through my naked crinkly décolletage when it happened.
A force equivalent to that of a five-thousand-pound wrecking ball slammed into my back, sending me head-first into the mud and instant unconsciousness!
I saw the video two days later from my hospital bed.
More than one old coot had filmed it and plastered the thing all over social media.
I had looked okay, I thought, raising my flappy arms into the air, keeping my temper when boos erupted from the onlookers.
Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, Esme had hurtled at speed and launched into a karate kick that would titillate Bruce Lee. She connected solidly, propelling me into the mud, face-first, where I lay, suffocating in thick goo until an old codger with taped-up glasses waded in and dragged me from the bog hole.
Once I was safely on the bank, being attended to by an elderly paramedic with severe essential tremors, the video operator scanned the field coming to rest upon a spotless ruby-red prune lying in the grass at the edge of the mud pit.
Esme had been a black belt in some martial art or other in her youth. Muscle memory and sheer determination to win at all costs had propelled her through the air to deliver the killer blow.
She had hit her head, dislocated a shoulder, and broken a hip!
I declared myself to be the winner because of my lesser injuries!
When I had time to study the video a little more, I was amused to see that the retchy paramedic had been first on the scene but had reneged during a dizzy spell to be sent home by my elderly first aid responder.
I later learned that Paramedic the Younger had gone back to school to study pediatrics.
When I returned to Bingo the following week, I was amazed by a standing, sitting and wobbling ovation by my peers. It seemed that Esme’s low blow had been unpopular.
To my great pleasure, she remained in the hospital for eight weeks, allowing me to win eighty per cent of the bingo games.
In full transparency, I won almost all of the bingo games in Esme’s absence but slipped a number of my successful cards to my new bingo buddy, Macular Guy. It warmed my heart to see him excitedly wheeze, “Bingo!”
It was, of course, the right thing to do. He had saved me from the mud pit, and he needed help to pay for his trashed glasses. At ten bucks a win, I figured it was still going to be some time before he ditched the taped-up ones.
Watching him trying to keep the ‘mended’ specs on his nose was pitiful so it was fairly easy to convince The Stitch and Bitch Club, the Bingo Association and the Codgers’ Senior Cits to hold a cake stall or two, the results of which enabled Macular Guy to purchase new specs.
Using some of the leftover funds, a two-dollar card was sent to Esme, noting and regretting the fact that flowers were outside the budget constraints of all involved organizations.
The remaining proceeds funded a wonderful do in the Bingo Hall. We partied until the early hours of the evening, celebrating Macular Guy’s new frames and my overwhelming victory at the Bingo Bust-ups Bog Hole, situated behind the Codgers’ Senior Citizens’ Club.
Thanks to Patrick Eades for prompting me to write this rubbish and for sharing his secret desires in the article below.
I can’t be the only one hanging out to see some Grandma-on-Grandma mud-wrestling-to-the-death action. Patrick Eades
