March 7th - Ping Pawn

Today was the day which I awaited in anticipation for quite some time now. Today was the highly-publicized table tennis match pitting this lowly Canadian wordsmith against the wily veteran Father-In-Law. I had better bring my A-game too. I’d been talking some big talk, now let’s see if I could walk a big walk. I made sure to eat a good meal the night before, get plenty of rest, and skip breakfast the day of the big match. It's like Johnny Cash used to say to his band The Tennessee Three, “Always play hungry”.

Well, maybe I should have eaten my oatmeal with a straw this morning because I was sure sucking it up now. This man was clearly well-practiced. My wife told me that he plays every day. In fact, his dining room table converts to a ping pong table if you just put the leaf in. I was no match for his ping pong prowess. I hung my head in defeat today, for the first time in a while. I don't feel too bad though. He was obviously going easy on me, and I actually kept up for a little while. That is until he started unleashing his big smash on me, or a stupifying topspin shot that left me scratching my head with ping pong perplexity. He could actually make the ball bounce in a totally different direction than where it came from.

After my humiliation, my wife and I started changing up, rallying with Dad until he got bored and tried letting us win. A few older, retired guys were watching us, and decided that my Father-In-Law was easy bait, and swooped in for a challenge. What they didn't know, was that he was once district champion in these parts, and was only putting on a show with us so he could shark these guys and send them off with their paddles between their legs. (I could have used balls there, but that would be downright perverted. I refuse to tarnish the good name of table tennis for the sake of a testicle joke, thank you very much.)

Father-In-Law destroyed the first challenger handily, beating him in straight games. They play games to 11, in a best-of-five series. Father-In-Law won the first game 11-3, then 11-6. Next! I had been watching his next challenger play for a while. His unique serving technique caught my eye over on the other side of the room. This dude might actually make Dad break a sweat! I think Father-In-Law read my mind, because he stripped down to his undershirt before taking on challenger #2. I was right about his serving technique. He was throwing down the spin-shots too. Father-In-Law was up to the test though, dishing out unstoppable power-shots one after another. The final tally had Father-In-Law up 2 games to 1, and thus he was crowned grand champion of the Friday morning retirees and people with nothing better do with their time. Heck, I was there, and I'm not retired. Although I may just have to retire from the world of ping pong while I still have my pride. It's the classy thing to do.

I told Father-In-Law that I will practice hard before our next meeting so that I can at least give him some competition. He laughed. It’s gonna take a lot of practice for me to get up to his level. Around 40 or 50 years I’d say. But hey, I've got nothing better to do. My dining room table is just begging to be turned into a playing field of some sort. It's either that or a giant Wheel of Fortune, and I don't think we could get Vanna White at such short notice. I don't know of any household-name Ping Pongers, so that being said, one of them should be free to drop by and teach yours truly how to take on Yoda, and become the King of the Ping.