What is there to learn at a white elephant bingo party?

Have you ever been to a White Elephant Bingo Party? Well I have, and recently!

A group of my friends were going and asked me to come along. Well, I hadn't played bingo since I was a kid, but these friends are fun so I thought, why not? And it was for a good charity.

I'm not sure my beloved Baheej would have agreed to join, but he was very sociable and experimental. However, he did not grow up in a culture that knew about bingo, and I'm sure he never played.

To this bingo party, each attendee had to bring a gift-wrapped "white elephant" gift as part of the prizes. It's supposed to be an item from one's house that someone else might like. It could be something new. I brought a pretty fruit bowl, wrapped brightly with a big bow.

The event was in a local church basement common room. The church ladies provided lunch. It started at noon. Church women are well known as good cooks! There was no cost to play, or for lunch, just a white elephant for prize table and a cash donation to the jar for whatever you wished to donate to the charity.

So I went. We had a great lunch for about an hour, and then the game started. Earlier during lunch, I had noticed a very distinguished woman placing her gift on the prize table. It was different from the others, wrapped with paw prints on unobtrusive brown paper, with a green string as the ribbon. The others were all colorful, purple, pink, flowers, bows. I set my sights on the brown paper. The game was very well organized and moved along briskly. It was emcee'd by the daughter of my friend DeLores.

After the main rounds of play, and all the gifts had been chosen, there was a final round called "stealing." That doesn't sound very churchlike, but true. At this point another person had my brown paper prize. So when I got a bingo, I stole it. Yahoo!

After the game ended, we all opened our prizes so everyone could see what was inside the mystery packages. My prize turned out to be a darling massaging neck pillow in the form of a soft, kitty-shaped neck rest. New and so cute. The donor's friend got my fruit bowl. Turns out the attendees had all brought really nice prizes, not at all "white elephants."

So the point is: What does this all have to do with anything? Well, my friend Karen knew I was going to this event, therefore I told her about the outcome and my prize. And that it was lots of fun. And she said something true - that it is good to do something outside our normal activities once in a while.

Getting outside our comfort zones is good for us. Her own dear husband died more recently than mine did, but she understands long-term grief, and that we need to keep trying. Smart friend. But the motorized massaging cat pillow scared my kitties!

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.