Ignoring the Thoughtless Idiots
It's early on Sunday evening, the kids are hidden in various corners of the house – their noses inevitably buried in phones – and dinner is bubbling away on top of the cooker. Chicken curry this evening – designed mostly to burn the cold virus out of our youngest daughter.
We all went to a school fundraiser yesterday evening – a “Bingo Night” at our youngest's school. I found myself torn during the evening between valuing the school raising funds, and one team in particular pretty much destroying the raffle for everybody else.
We arrived early – to help setup the hall. One of the school staff members asked if I could re-arrange the tables to make room for a group of 12 that were expected. Here's where it gets interesting – most families that bought raffle tickets bought a strip of five tickets per person. The group of twelve bought at least five strips per person. When the raffle was finally drawn, the inevitable happened – with the big table winning again, and again, and again.
They kept on cheering.
I had to tell myself that the school had raised lots of funds from them, so nobody could complain, but for the children on every other table in the room it kind of destroyed any chance they had of winning anything – and that made me a bit sad.
I've seen it happen once before. Not long after our children started at infant school we went to a fundraising dinner, and a particular table bought most of the raffle tickets. As they won prize after prize they laughed hilariously at their cleverness. Thankfully that event didn't include any children, so the rest of the room just rolled their eyes and quietly filed everybody at the table away as colossal arseholes.
Anyway.
Dinner will be ready in a bit – we're just waiting for the rice to cook. I imagine the rest of the evening will be filled with writing, rubbish TV, and a few retro video games. I've resurrected the Raspberry Pi, filled with inumerable arcade machines from the early 1980s.
Anybody for a game of pacman ?