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photo29.jpg:Bingo Long
BingoLong The Unauthorized Autobiography
The player known as "Bingo Long" was born to Harry Downdare and Blaze Ng Downdare, and was given his first name, Long, not Bingo, upon his first bath by the nurse. ("Bingo" was a nickname which would come much later, but, contrary to what you might expect, it had nothing to do with word games. It came from the dog song, one of Long's childhood favorites, along with "My Dingaling." And while the lyrics did facilitate his spelling skills as a child, the clap that accompanies it served as an uncomfortable foreshadowing of his adolescence.) When Long Downdare was only three, he first discovered his affinity for word games after being taught, by whom he would later identify as "imaginary friends," a number of words that were to be restored to acceptability in the third OSPD (but continue to get his face slapped). Prodigy that he was, he graduated from high school two years early -- at least that's what the Principal told him -- and found himself in College in 1968, where he was radicalized... and where, for some reason, his memory started going bad, leading him to halluc... uh, make up stuff. Having never, during this time period, actually seen the inside of a classroom, Long was curious about what teachers actually do, so, upon reaching his twenties, he followed his curiosities into the world of education. He began his career with little kids, figuring that it would be easier to identify him as the teacher that way, but would go on to administration, then teacher education, then websites (no, not the kind that he would go on to under that other name)... and, well, the rest is the stuff of legends. But it all started with a little boy with a dream... and, sure, he wet himself during that dream... and periodically thereafter... but that's not the point here. Bingo Long Downdare is everyman. I know you've heard other people say "I'm every woman," like Oprah, for instance, but, again, that's not the point here. The point is that the story of Bingo Long is a story that you just couldn't make up. (Well, maybe you could... no, not YOU, him, over there... but then it probably would have been funnier.) From that log cabin of his childhood to the liver and apple pie of his adolescence to his wanton young adult years (he prefers dumplings these days) to his marriage to a lawyer (and subsequent need for a lawyer) to the present day -- single again, now middle aged, a father, a professor, a writer, a rebel, and one complex dude -- one thing can be said. It's the secret of life, really, and that is .... {{out of space}}