Truth be told, I was never really interested. For me, it was something to do when stuck on holidays, when all televisions in a fifty-kilometre radius had malfunctioned. We didn’t have one at home. But at every caravan park we ever visited – from the dingiest lump of dirt with an adjacent toilet block to the self-proclaimed ‘holiday resorts’ – there was always a ‘Rec’ room and in that Rec room there was always a ping-pong table. As I approached the door, my heart could not help but hope for Pac Man or even a little Dig Dug. Upon pulling the handle, a dingy squat would be revealed, various incomplete board games in a pile that looked as though they had been recently assaulted and a decrepit ping-pong table.
Truth be told, I was never really interested. For me, it was something to do when stuck on holidays, when all televisions in a fifty-kilometre radius had malfunctioned. We didn’t have one at home. But at every caravan park we ever visited – from the dingiest lump of dirt with an adjacent toilet block to the self-proclaimed ‘holiday resorts’ – there was always a ‘Rec’ room and in that Rec room there was always a ping-pong table. As I approached the door, my heart could not help but hope for Pac Man or even a little Dig Dug. Upon pulling the handle, a dingy squat would be revealed, various incomplete board games in a pile that looked as though they had been recently assaulted and a decrepit ping-pong table.
For most people, their opponent is the person standing on the other side of the net. Not for me. When attempting to play ping-pong, I was fighting two adversaries – gravity and the game itself. I admit that they both got the better of me. I lacked the patience and the precision to ever get the ball from one side of the net to the other as the rules required. If it landed on the table, it would only ever be by accident and never by design. Like everything, I believed that maximum effort was required and would swing the paddle with a level of force intended to launch the ball not so much over the net as in to outer space.
So much in a game of ping-pong turns on the serve. It was a skill I never mastered. At recreation rooms, there was always some kid who had devoted his entire life to the art of ping-pong; no doubt dropping out of school to spend every waking hour to mastering the art of the back-spin serve. There is nothing quite so humiliating as standing at the end of the table and watching as little white balls go zipping past without you so much as moving your bat one inch. The experience is even more humbling when the person shooting them past your ears is your eight-year-old sister. Then there’s the jog of shame…
The jog of shame occurs when the ball shoots past, rolls along the floor and out the door and you have to trot along after it, bringing it back before someone in an EJ Falcon towing a caravan called ‘The Global Conqueror’ runs over it. (That’s the other thing about camping – all the caravans have names better suited to an armoured artillery vehicle.) I spent more time retrieving ping-pong balls than I ever did playing the game itself. I promised myself that if I ever won a match, I would instantly retire. Now, it seems, it’s too late.
Ping-pong as we know it will shortly be at an end. The celluloid ball – which has long been the championship standard – is due to be replaced by plastic. I may have hated the game, but even I take no delight to see a once-great sport reduced to the ignominy of plastic balls. There are apparently two reasons for this monumental shake up. Firstly, there is something of a worldwide shortage of raw celluloid. The second reason for ruining everything is simple: safety.
On behalf of anyone who has ever copped a ping pong ball square between the eyes, I can only say that they may be round but those little suckers certainly do pack a punch. But, apparently, that’s not the issue. Celluloid is flammable. Apparently, there are concerns that the balls might burst into flame whilst being transported. Talk about a squandered opportunity. All these years of ping-pong tournaments, and no one ever thought to incorporate a flaming ball into the game proper? With the added dimension of naked flame, ping-pong might have stood a chance to haul itself out of the sporting fringes and become a mainstream sport that people might have actually wanted to watch. Rec rooms at caravans across the country would have been transformed from future toilet-blocks-in-waiting to flaming gladiatorial areas. If only.
Being replaced by plastic is, I feel, a fate that awaits us all. But rather than try and reinvent the wheel / ball, I think that powers that be should consider alternatives. For example, why not replace the ping-pong ball altogether? A squash ball is about the right size. That said, a little black ball might be hard to see (Rec room lighting is never that flash). Perhaps a medicine ball is the answer. There are no problems with visibility and the chances of it rolling along the floor and out the door are, it must be said, remote. Even I would be able to spot a medicine ball as it lumbered over the net, slamming into the table like a spherical elephant drunkenly falling over a fence.
That’s where I went wrong. I see the problem as clearly as a medicine ball. Paddles should only be used when you’re heading to a particular creek in a barbed wire canoe. Not for sport. I should’ve used a tennis racquet and swapped that little white missile for something easier to see. Like a balloon. The mistake I made was in accepting things as they were. I should have been bolder; more willing to mix things us, regardless of the consequences. I ought to have written my own rules. And if the kid in the Rec room who’s waiting to trash some blow-in from Tyabb twenty-one to zip has a problem with that, I can always set his ball on fire.