Can you imagine using the word “bullshit” in front of your 80-plus-year-young parents?

Let  it fly in the name of cheap entertainment.

On Christmas Day the Feeney clan flew south into Fort Myers Florida International Airport. Upon deplaning we picked up our bags and made a bee line to the Hertz #1 Club rental car counter. Let our vacation begin.

Strike that.

 Let the game begin.

Blame it on Harvard. When then vice-president Al Gore spoke at a Harvard commencement ceremony, students played Bullshit bingo from the audience.

What’s this?

When our pal Al would say a particular word in his speech, like “global warming,” it was if someone called “B-5!” in a smoke-filled Bingo parlor.

Certain words command certain values.

Ben, being Ben changed the dynamic of the game and morphed it  into a travel game. Sort of “I-Spy”–yet on steroids.

So here we are, the traveling Feeneys, pulling out of the Fort Myers International Airport when Dad makes the first call.

“I see a personal injury lawyer billboard.” He adds, “Lord, what a bad suit.”

“Good work dad,” I exclaim.

Mom is next on the scoreboard as we make our way to Sanibel Island.

“Look on the right, it the Digestive Health Center! B-I-N-G—– I go!”

“Good goin’ mother. Look for the other doc-in-a-box spaces on our cards,” exclaims Dad. “Anyone see The Eyelid Reconstruction Center?

“No, honey.”

Then came the Robb and Stucky Furniture store. Oh, then a Pawn shop. Well, well.  What do I see? A decrepit roadside fruit stand with oranges baking in the winter sun? It was 80 degrees when we arrived in Fort Myers. This commanded a big G-3.

“Look! (no pun intended) an Eye Center located directly to the right of the main gateway to the Minnesota Twins spring  baseball training stadium.”

“Yes, but it it is not The Reconstructive Eyelid Center on the list,” notes mom.

Mothers are so intuitive.”Same difference,” I mutter.

Dad notes, “Is this where they send umpires who make bad calls….or ball players who cannot hit?”

I retort, “Good points dad, yet I forgot to add winter baseball to our Bullshit Bingo cards.

“Look, a tall blue heron, looking for food in a man-made drainage ditch with icky water!” I-3.

“To your left. Grazing cows on undeveloped industrial land. A republican tax loophole.” N-2.

“Why is that a senior citizen peddling a big ass tricycle?” O-4.

To put swaying palms or a monster truck tooling beyond the speed limit, or someone chuckin’ a Budwieser can from a moving car would be mundane. They did not make the Bingo sheet.

My list had to have bumpers with stickers left over from the 2008 Presidential election, road crews with 13 men staring at a lone hole, and a lone beach flip-flop in the middle of the road.

A satire on Floridian life?

 Possibly.

A harmless game?

No one was rushed to the hospital.

A harbinger of family laughter and family bonding?

Um, yes.

A welcome back to a state we love.

Right on.

Ah, this is what escaping the cold of the north does to the brain…………………….

B-5!

Brendan Ben Feeney