Have you recently uttered the phrase “Well, I didn’t have that on my bingo card.”

Same.

When I was a kid, I had this wheel bingo game I used to play with my mom. You’d spin the wheel, a number would land, and we’d mark our cards with those satisfying little plastic chips. There was something comforting about it. Predictable. Structured. Someone was clearly in charge of the chaos.

Fast forward a few decades and now we’re all playing a very different version of bingo.

Except nobody gave us the rules.
Or the cards. And the wheel appears to be operated by raccoons.

Somewhere along the way, bingo became a metaphor for modern life. We’re all walking around with invisible cards in our heads, mentally checking off surreal events as they happen in real time.

Kobe Bryant dying in a helicopter crash? Global pandemic shutting down the planet? That was 2020’s opening round, and I’m pretty sure most of us got that bingo card completely wrong for 2020.

Did anyone have Mariah Carey performing in Italian at the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony on theirs? Because that feels like a bonus square you unlock after surviving multiple emotional boss levels.

Olympic ski jumping turning into a full-blown anatomy-meets-aerodynamics scandal? (If you don’t know, I encourage a late-night Google spiral.) Definitely not on my card.

Indiana basketball showing up in the 2026 cultural conversation?
Unexpected plot twist. (Well, I believe the coach probably had ot on his bingo card).

And yet here we are.

Every week delivers a news item or headline that sounds like it was generated by a sleep-deprived AI with access to espresso and chaos. We’ve gone from asking “Did that really just happen?” to casually saying things like, “Wow, that’s a wild one for my bingo card.”

Bingo cards are no longer something you play at church basements or retirement communities. They’ve become shorthand for collective disbelief. A coping mechanism. A witty comeback when reality refuses to stay in its lane.

It’s how we process the absurd.

Because calling it “trauma bonding with strangers on the internet” feels a little heavy for casual conversation.

What fascinates me is how seamlessly we’ve adapted. Humans are remarkably resilient. Faced with nonstop unpredictability, we didn’t crumble entirely. We gamified it.

We turned chaos into squares.

We gave ourselves permission to laugh at the bizarre, even when it lives uncomfortably close to grief, uncertainty, or exhaustion. We use bingo cards to create distance, to regain a sense of control, to say that I see this. I acknowledge the weirdness. I am still standing.

Some days your card is filled with heartbreak. Some days it’s celebrity nonsense and sports surprises. Some days it’s just trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen.

And somehow, all of it counts.

So how many bingo cards do we collectively have by now?
Hundreds? Thousands? An entire warehouse stacked with laminated disbelief?

Probably.

But here’s the thing.We’re still playing.

We’re still marking squares. Still finding humor. Still showing up for the next spin of the wheel even when we already know it might land on something deeply unhinged.

And maybe that’s the real win.

Not getting bingo.

Just staying in the game.