Close your eyes and picture this: A warm and cozy … no, wait a minute. You’d better open your eyes or you won’t be able to read the rest of your newspaper. Or worse, you might drift off to sleep and land face first in your cereal bowl, and then you’ll be cranky and out-of-sorts the rest of the day.
Let’s start over: a warm and cozy home nestled in the trees. A pathway lined with twinkling lights welcoming visitors to the front door. Snow heaped into drifts, sparkling in the moonlight. Branches heavy with…OK, I made up the snow part – I can’t help that it only snows every other decade around here! Now – let’s move on.
Inside the house a stately tree, beautifully decorated; delectable treats heaped on a candle-lit table in the festive dining room. Skillfully wrapped gifts piled high around the Christmas tree and a friendly white dog lying at its base. Top off this heartwarming scene with a dozen genteel women seated near the fire, murmuring softly while sipping their tea. And somewhere outside pigs are flying and hell has just frozen over.
Welcome to the annual holiday gathering of the Bunco Babes where the bell-ringing, dice-slinging game of luck is temporarily put on ice for the sole purpose of stealing … er, exchanging Christmas gifts. Where your only mission is getting out of there alive. Â
First – a bit of background. For the uninitiated, Bunco (or “Bunko”) is a fast-paced game of dice whose inventor will never capture the Pulitzer for the most mentally stimulating pursuit. In fact – and we all recognize and admit to this – you could probably have the IQ of mayonnaise and be able to excel at Bunco. More often than not the most difficult part of the game is remembering who’s keeping score. The real reason Bunco is so popular is that it gives us girls a good excuse to get together and yak at super-sonic speed before the bell rings. And maybe win stuff.
Most Bunco groups contain at least one member affectionately known as the “Bunco Nazi.” She will yell, “Ring-The-Bell!!!” at least 167 times per night if the group doesn’t break land speed records moving to the next table. And heaven forbid you land at the wrong table because such catastrophes can take literally hours to sort out. My opinion is that if there is a hell – and I’m not so sure there is because this would certainly explain Jerry Springer – then “hell” is standing knee deep in the flames while “Ring-The-Bell!!!” reverberates throughout eternity.
So each December, one Bunco member invites her Bunco girlfriends over to enjoy a light supper and – for want of a word suitable for this newspaper – a “lively” gift stealing extravaganza.
The gift you bring is crucial because you should bring something you’re not going to hate in the event you have to go home with it. And you certainly don’t want to gain this reputation: “Good grief, here comes Edna; she always brings the crappiest present.”
Furthermore you should wrap your gift appealingly because God forbid nobody picks your present. Honestly, you could pretty much bring a turkey baster; if it’s wrapped to look like it contains the Hope Diamond, you’re in good shape.
After supper we gather in a circle where we draw numbers and then spend the next half hour arguing about the rules. This is pretty much futile because most of the rules go out the window in the first five minutes anyway. The basic idea is when it’s your turn, you choose a gift and unwrap it. If the next girl likes your gift, she can – follow me closely here because this next move is truly steeped in the warmth of the Christmas spirit – steal your gift! Or anyone else’s as long as it’s not been “touched” three times. Are you totally lost? Me, too.
Then there are the politics of whose gift to steal. One girl in our group is so nice that the last time somebody stole a gift from her was, I think, 1967, and the responsible party still visits her priest weekly to confess. But some of us are just basically fun to steal from because we put up such a howling fuss about it. Personally, I think I should be in the “nice” group, but apparently others don’t share that opinion.
When it was my turn I selected a gift, a wonderful Christmas candle, and – oh, oh; this was a bad sign. My perky, dark-haired friend was next, and she was up and trolling the opened gifts. As she approached my chair I tried to nonchalantly shove the candle behind me. Too late – the candle was history. Back to the tree I went for another gift; this time a lovely bracelet. Then somebody snatched the Christmas candle and Girlfriend’s on the loose again. Oh, the nerve! Before you could say “Scrooge” she had seized my bracelet, and there I was: a two-time loser.
“I’ll trade you my gift for the necklace you’re wearing,” she offered. Oh, the audacity! And OK, I was sort of tempted but my necklace did, after all, have some sentimental value. I countered her offer, trying to palm off a random article of underwear, which was, alas, rejected.
I’ll tell you, people, this Christmas-gift-stealing business is getting ugly, so I’ll show them. Next year I’m bringing a Salad Shooter. Wrapped in mink.
Gale Hammond is a 23-year Morgan Hill resident. Reach her at
Ga*********@ao*.com
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