Bunco!

Well, yet another virgin experience taken in much excitement last night – my first Bunco game.

I had no idea what Bunco was before my lovely friend Sahar invited me to be part of a Bunco game.

This is an American phenomenon so, naturally, I Googled it.

This is what Google replied:

Bunco was originally played in 18th-century England where it was known as “8-Dice cloth”. It was imported to San Francisco as a gambling activity in 1855, where it gave its name to gambling parlors, or “Bunco parlors”, and more generally to any swindle. 

According to the Washington Post, Bunco is sometimes referred to as the housewife’s drinking game. Also, young adults use Bunco as a framework for social drinking and Bunco gatherings may jokingly be referred to as “Drunko” to reflect this tendency.

Ooh la la! Upon posting my excitement at playing said game on Facebook, a British friend replied that the ladies had played this on a recent episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, that most excellent documentary-journal about women with big fake boobs, massive hair and a load of time and money.

Triple that excitement!! I’m in for Bunco!

I rock up to a lovely house of Desperate Housewife proportions and am greeted with food and drink and yoghurt covered Pretzels. Brillopads!

The rules of the game are here, if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTlkpuzs67E

(These are the dice and yoghurt-coated Pretzels…)

The game is very sociable, you get to move about and chat and everyone has a glass or two of wine and it’s a right old giggle. I can see me bringing this back to the UK for endless girly nights in.

Observations about the game and the lovely ladies I met:

Everyone was very glamorous and had fabulous teeth (I still have an obsession with Americans’ teeth).

All the homes of American families that I have been in are big, just like on TV and totally spotless.

The game is all about meeting and chatting – I wasn’t the only virgin in the group, and by the end I had exchanged cultural anecdotes, learned a lot about American ways of life and got a few new numbers in my phone for lunch dates and coffee – ace 🙂

There was a lot of lovely food, as always. I always feel obliged to eat it, which is a bit of a pain for my waistband, but it was delicious, especially the chocolate covered strawberries…

People were drinking! This does not seem to happen often at American ‘dos’ and it was super to be in grown up, glamorous company with some gals who liked to have a few glasses. I think a couple of them might have driven home though…. 😉

I perfected my Bunco scream – this happens when you get a Bunco or a ‘baby’ – I got both, and my Bunco scream was most excellently executed towards the end of the evening! The screaming for Buncos or babies gets louder and more raucous as the evening goes on, as you would expect. And you get to ding the blinging Bunco bell….

The blinging Bunco bell

I didn’t win anything, but I think I might just be a Bunco addict in the making. And I’m definitely on for lunch/pedicure/massages with some of my new American housewife chums!

Valentine’s

Harry has 16 people in his class at school, including him.

He has to, therefore, take in 15 Valentine’s cards made out to his friends in his class and signed by him.  In return, he will receive 15 Valentine’s cards from each of them.

I am dumbfounded by this.

Whatever happened to a) the mystery of receiving a card from anonymous admirer and b) getting your heart broken because you didn’t receive a card (I am pretty sure that five years old is not too young to get your heart broken – best to get used to it now…) 🙂

Jay-walkers

In the UK we call them jay walkers, those people who walk along the road as cars are whizzing by.

In the USA, I get all TV/movie head about it and begin to think that the person walking along the highway is either a) a murderer, or b) come from a burning house, or c) been mugged, or d) other mad stuff.

The thing is, they probably are just walking to work or have broken down….but then that’s a bit boring, so I think more likely c).