Why does Bingo scare the General Assembly?

By Chuck Thompson | The Sunday Column

OPINION — A few months ago, I wrote about the state-wide Five Hour Bingo play limit law.

I can’t seem to let this one go. It still haunts me that nobody can explain why it’s illegal to play bingo for more than five hours.

In North Carolina, you can drive barefoot and swim naked (Don't try it in public, but in seclusion at an uninhabited pond, or at home in your pool, is your business). You can eat while driving, you just can’t hold your phone.... It is also illegal to allow a bull or ram to run rampant for more than three days. Three days is the limit. They can terrorize the neighborhood for three days, but anything more than that and you're in BIG trouble, buddy!

But back to bingo — it’s illegal in North Carolina to serve alcohol while playing bingo— seriously, what happens after five hours? Hallucination? Insanity? Loss of bowel function? The bingo equivalent of road rage?

There's no limit on how many scratch-offs you can play or how many lottery tickets you can buy.

Why can people drink while playing cards but not while playing bingo?

If you can’t drink while playing bingo, then I can’t imagine why anyone would play bingo that long, but if you can’t drink then what is the problem?

I don’t understand why anyone would want to play bingo for more than five hours, but what happened that was so… horrific that a law had to be passed by the North Carolina General Assembly?

Did the senior center start mosh pitting to Korn, or did a brawl break out?

Is five hours the limit a brain can handle bingo until it loses all civility and mass chaos breaks out?

Many laws are passed AFTER something unspeakable happens… and since the law was recently updated in 2023, I can’t imagine what it was… but it freighted the general assembly enough to not only retain the law but update it a few years ago.

Is it like Gremlins? If a 95 year old woman is playing bingo, you have three rules… don’t feed her or give her any water after hour four, and whatever you do, don’t ever never let anyone in a nursing home play bingo for more than five hours, and now we’re going to extend that to everyone, not just the upper senior citizens.

God help us all.

Maybe that’s how the world ends. It’s all of the prophecies rolled into one…. Armageddon, The Anti-Christ. The mark of the beast. A 5 hour bingo game.

Read The Sunday Column every week, only at ShelbyIndependent.com

The Sunday Column is sponsored by:

Copyright 2026, The Shelby Independent.