Cow Surfing

It’s true: people surf in Wisconsin.

On a lake.

Before moving to Sheboygan, I didn’t know it was known as the Malibu of the Midwest because of its surf scene. I didn’t realize it even had a surf scene. Because of its location and geography, it offers some of the best waves on the Great Lakes.

Walking past a surf shop in the land of cheese curds wasn’t on my bingo card.

What’s on your bingo card? 

What isn’t?

This idiom is a fun way of saying, “I didn’t expect that to happen” when something surprising, strange, or unlikely occurs. 

If it feels like you hear it everywhere, blame COVID-19. A January 2, 2020 Twitter post is often cited as an early known reference to a “2020 bingo card,” and the format spread rapidly that year, delivering one extraordinary news event after another.

The phrase treats life as if we prepared a prediction grid in advance and an event was so unexpected that we didn’t even include it among the plausible possibilities.

The fact that the saying keeps turning up everywhere isn’t proof that we’re living in unusually strange times.

It’s proof that we need bigger bingo cards.

You know what probably wasn’t on many bingo cards? The discovery of penicillin and DNA and the Grand Canyon. Neither was the invention of the light bulb or the airplane or the internet. 

And yet, here we are. 

Indeed, the size of our bingo cards is a condemnation of the size of our imaginations.

Kids have pretty big bingo cards. They are big enough to include flying elephants, giant beanstalks that reach to the heavens, and wardrobes that become doors to magical worlds. 

The older we get, the smaller our bingo cards become.

If we’re honest, many of us act like life five years from now will look exactly the same as it does now, except for the updated year on our calendar and — maybe — an extra grey hair or two.

Not foolish enough to claim we can predict the future, we construct an imaginary prediction grid of plausible possibilities. We’re pretty sure we know what might happen if we don’t get that job. If this relationship doesn’t work out. If we don’t get into that school. Or if we’re not married this time next year. 

The fact that our bingo card has some options tricks us into thinking it has them all.

Then we are genuinely shocked when something happens that wasn’t on it.

How many things have happened in your life that were not on your bingo card?

I already know the answer:

A lot.

Even the negative events we didn’t see coming have a peculiar way of producing positive outcomes we never imagined.

I can tell you that when the global pandemic descended upon us, my bingo card was filled with all kinds of plausible scenarios, including options like bankruptcy and the onset of the apocalypse.

Buying my dream home in The Malibu of the Midwest was definitely not on it. Then again, neither was marrying a blonde, becoming a professional speaker, or living in a surf town in Wisconsin.

Maybe instead of being astonished by all the things happening that aren’t on our bingo cards, we should consider getting bigger ones. 

Or throwing them away altogether.

Only God knows what the future holds. 

But maybe we can be more like children, humble enough to know we don’t know it all and ready to be surprised by what happens next.

Now, having lived in Sheboygan a while, I’m used to the surfers and love watching them.

Still, seeing a cow surf among them would not be on my bingo card.

Then again, maybe it should be.