Not Sure How To Word The Title.

I might come back to it.

At the beginning of December, last year, I responded to a writing prompt. A fellow writer asked me to write a story (or rather two stories), fictional or not, with a Christmas theme. Set around the idea that Santa issues gifts to us all based on whether we have been naughty or nice.

I took up that challenge and decided to do two fictional stories. The first one (Naughty) was about how a very young me ended up committing a heinous act, in a story most definitely not for children’s ears on Christmas Eve. The second story (Nice) was a comedy description of our Christmas day, family gathering, around the dinner table.

Most families have a family member who, (how shall I describe it) is not quite up to date with what is, and what isn’t, considered to be “politically correct”. For the best part, it will be one of the older relatives and, for the purposes of my comedy story, I depicted a, very old, Mother-In-Law as the offending character.

The premise was that she had the propensity to say outrageous, and severely offensive things about all manner of races, ethnicities, cultures, religions, and so on. No amount of attempts to correct her were successful. The fictional family, in which I wrote in the first person, was so used to her being that way that, in order to provide some comic relief, they devised a game to cover the embarrassment they all felt.

The game they devised was “Racist Bingo”. Before Christmas dinner was served, each family member was given a blank Racist Bingo card, with five spaces in which one would fill in the names of the targets of her disdain. You would get a double-point score for pure racism and one point for mere xenophobia. As dinner went on, one would tick off each offence she came out with, until you had all five. BINGO!

As part of the story, I included a mock-up of the fictional bingo card, as I imagined it would look like if it was real and not a comedy fiction.

Now, I was very pleased with the stories I wrote and, upon submission to the publication, I was greatly emboldened by the encouraging feedback I got from the publication founder and editor. However, they felt that the inclusion of the bingo card would result in their publication being closed down by Medium. Reluctantly, I removed the comedy, fictional, pretend, mock-up bingo card, for fear that they wouldn’t publish the story.

Ever since then, I have regretted it, and I wish I had stuck to my guns, to the point of self-publishing if I had to. So this is why I’m writing this. I am going to include the made-up, fictional, satirical, comedy, mock bingo card, which has no relation to anything in reality, other than to illustrate a ridiculous, fictional circumstance that, if people are honest, is something many of us have experienced, especially with older relatives.

You can scroll down to it now and let me know what you think. This might be the last time I get to write to you guys. Please consider reading the main article, linked at the bottom.

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