Nothing stops Glacier Hills bingo, not even UM-MSU

Michigan may have been facing Michigan State in the Big Ten men’s basketball semifinal, but that wasn’t going to keep Glacier Hills residents from missing their equally competitive Saturday afternoon bingo tournament.

Nor did it keep Ann Arbor’s Liverpool boys soccer club from joining Anna’s Kindness in volunteering to help the seniors with their tournament, and their transportation.

(Full disclosure, TVs throughout Glacier Hills were tuned to the UM-MSU game, so everyone could sneak a peek at the score periodically. Bingo was important, but hey, it’s UM-MSU).

Forsythe Middle School’s Graham Unsworth found himself nominated as the caller for the bingo game, learning quite quickly that his voice needed to resonate to the back of the room, and his flash cards with the bingo numbers needed to be held high and shown in a fluid sweeping motion.

“G48”

He called each game of the bingo session, including the game-ending cover-all, which took its toll on his vocal chords.

“My voice was dry and cracking the end,” said Graham, a seventh grader. “I needed a drink after cover-all.”

His teammates Santiago Fiori, Lawrence Millben, Damon Rochefort, Rhys Burman, and Lucas Anderson stood at each of the five tables and assisted the seniors with their bingo cards, ensuring the right numbers were covered, and then helped in calling out B-I-N-G-O for their table winners.

Oh, and then there was the song that followed every winning card, sung with the gusto of “Hail to the Victors.”

“B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name-oh.”

Which table did the most singing and winning? Santiago, a Slauson Middle School seventh grader, was certain it was his table in the center of the room thanks to resident Scott, who won two games including the final one.

Following bingo, Rhys, Drew Barker, and Damon helped push some of the residents back to their rooms. Drew admitted he had trouble keeping up because the resident he was pushing, Miss J, had a tendency to tap the brakes unnecessarily.

“She would put her feet down while I was pushing, so we were pretty far behind,” smiled Drew, a seventh grader at Saline Middle School.

After the residents were safely back in their rooms, Forsythe’s Isaac Levey-Czuchnowsky and the rest of the boys made a cart full of popcorn cups and went room to room, surprising residents with a midafternoon snack. One resident, a former schoolteacher, called the boys into her room to tell them how well-behaved they were. Another shared with them how much it meant to her to see young people visiting Glacier Hills to serve others. Room after room emotionally thanked the boys for the snack and for just being there, which left each delivering boy smiling as he left the room (none more than Damon).

The boys may have realized at that moment they had delivered more than popcorn and B-I-N-G-O’s that afternoon.

#randomactsofanna

If you’d like your middle school student to be involved in a future Anna’s Kindness project, send us an email at annaskindness@yahoo.com and we’ll add you to our mailing list. And please ‘like’ our Anna’s Kindness Facebook page and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.