Time Warp Tuesday --- Smoking Ladies

95% of people addicted to smoking had their first cigarette before the age of 18.

I remember hearing this statistic from the Surgeon General as I was studying to be a health teacher in college. Then I thought, "What about the other 5%"? And I came to the conclusion that the other 5% were the little old ladies that played BINGO in my hometown on Wednesday nights.

Like most Catholic Churches, my church had a weekly BINGO game in which the vast majority of the crowd was little old ladies and they all smoked (seemed to be a requirement!). As a kid I went with my mom a few times to play. It was always like walking into an ashtray and these women were very serious about their BINGO!

One thing that always annoyed me when we went is my mom reminding me of the "Postage Stamp". It is a way to get BINGO that is different than the normal vertical, horizontal, or diagonal ways. Basically it is when you cover any of the 4 corners on your card (making it look like a postage stamp I guess).

So one night we go to play BINGO and I was surprised that my mom didn't remind me about the postage stamp. So midway through one of the games, as a joke, I covered one of the corners of my card (making a postage stamp) and said, "Hey mom, too bad this doesn't count as a BINGO". She glances over at my card, see the fake postage stamp I made, and thinking it was real she yells at the top of her lungs, "BINGO!!!"

Well, everyone starts clearing off their cards, making the "I'm so upset it wasn't me" sighs all the while I am trying to tell my mom it was just a joke and I didn't mean for her to yell "BINGO". One of the workers came over to check my card, realized it wasn't a BINGO and announced that everyone should just keep playing. Well of course many of them had already cleaned off all their cards for that game and we got the evil eye from every old lady in the room with the look of, "You idiot, even the nursing home people can play this game correctly".

So that brings me to another conclusion...what makes this final 5% of the population start smoking? It is people like me, ruining their precious BINGO game.