Bunco - A Man's Perspective

My wife hosted Bunco at our house the other night. Bunco is a dice game 12 women play under the guise of playing a dice game. What it really is is an excuse to get together. And eat. And talk. And talk. And talk. If some dice get thrown during this 3-4 hour event, well, you know, sometimes that's gonna happen. It's really about having a good time - if you're a woman. If you're a man, it's basically the 5th inner circle of hell.

Don't get me wrong - I love women. Especially my wife. But no one ("no one" being code for: man) wants 12 women in their house at once without their accompanying spouses. Said spouses are required to constantly distract their women by doing normal ("normal" being code for: disgusting) men things, such as groin-scratching, burping and even more odorous and odious bodily functions. Without the husbands there, 12 women will focus on the one guy there, and you don't want it to be you. It's kind of like the interns following the doctor around on rounds to your room: "Here's Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith thought it would be a good idea to operate a chainsaw while chugging a case of beer. How's the groin feeling today, Mr. Smith? Which one of you would like to change his dressing?".

I'll go into a detailed explanation of the rules of Bunco for you: there aren't any. At least not that I could discern. Oh, I'm sure there are official rules, somewhere, but I couldn't figure out what they were. A lot of time seemed to be spent getting the ladies to move from one table to another, signaled by the ringing of a bell, which is totally ignored. You see, there's 3 tables set up with 4 ladies at each table. After a round of Bunco is completed (we just don't have enough space here to explain THAT), some of the ladies from each table are supposed to move to one of the other tables, while others remain at their present table, but have to move to a different seat at that table. It's much like musical chairs, except everyone's on crack. And deaf.

If one of the ladies can't make it to a Bunco night, the other players can either play a "ghost" at the missing chair, or better yet, get a substitute player. Sometimes, the extremely gullible husband of the woman hosting Bunco will be invited to play. Don't do it. Make up an excuse - changing the oil on the car, re-siding the house, shaving your head with a cheese grater - anything. I'm joking, of course - it wasn't that bad. But it does now rank lower than the cheese grater. And they call you a "dice monkey". I'm serious.

The scoring in Bunco is interesting and seems to depend upon the phase of the moon, the average speed of an English swallow in flight and pi. There can be ties, which are settled by swordplay. Just kidding - if there was swordplay involved, men would be playing this. Depending on your definition of the term "swordplay", dice may not even be needed. (You'll have to Google this if that doesn't make sense to you - don't make me go there.) The game ends when all the food is gone, or the number of Bunco's scored is greater than the square root of of dessert, whichever comes first. Peace.