I was invited to play “Bunco” at a friend’s house recently.

For those of you who don’t know, Bunco is a game where you throw three dice and hope for sixes.  If you happen to get three sixes at once, it’s a “bunco” and you get a bunch of points.  If you get three ones, it’s a “snake-eyes”, even though I’ve never seen a snake with three eyes, and you lose all your points. 

You play with a partner and tally up how many sixes you have between the two of you until the bell rings.  I’ve played different ways, but this group plays that when one pair of gals at the “head” table reaches the score of 21, the round is over.

Sounds pretty simple.

Well, let me tell you something.  If you ever want to blackmail somebody, just hang out at a Bunco game. 

There were some women there who I’ve never heard raise their voices, and sister, the sound in that room with all those women yelling at once was deafening. 

There were teachers and mothers there whose whole lives have been spent telling their kids to be quiet, sit down, and “use your inside voices”.  These very women (me included) were screaming uncontrollably.

The children who lived there came home in the middle of it all, walked into the room with their hands over their ears, and quickly left saying, “Geesh, Mom!  I can’t even hear myself think in here!”

I wonder where they got that line from?

When somebody rolls a “bunco”, more rules fall into place.  The person who rolls it gets some points, but the person who GRABS the dice after they stop rolling gets points, too.

This is where the game gets a little dangerous.

You have never seen women fight like they do when they’re trying to grab little square things on a table.  Picture four grown prim and proper ladies throw themselves into the center of the table, madly slapping and grabbing and yelling and pushing and swatting, all because of these little cubes.  And, or course, points.  Women will kill for a few points.

During one such event, one of the dice flew off the table during the scuffle and onto the floor.  The women then dove to the floor, groveling, hunting, searching, grabbing blindly for the culprit.  The victorious one held her hands high and screamed, “I’VE GOT IT!!”

I didn’t win anything, but I only lost one fingernail.  The scratch on my arm stopped bleeding after just a little while.

I figure I came out pretty well, all things considered.