Peter Ping Pong

You may remember that I was a sucker for a sad story when kids could not get a coach or sponsor for a sport or organization. I was approached one year by a group of students who wanted to start a Ping Pong club but our Principal had told them they needed a sponsor to use the gym after school. I jump at the chance because I fashioned myself and pretty fair ping pong player and would love to play and participate in this. We met a couple of time a week in the “Big" gym and it was a lot of fun. AS it turned out, I was pretty good, at least in this crowd. Word got around about the club and my playing ability and most of my kids would say, "I'm never going to play you in ping pong."  My head began to swell a bit and an aura of invincibility overcame me.

Please let me introduce you to Peter, who I will name, Peter Ping Pong. Peter was a very serious, high achieving and competitive second generation chinese immigrant who was even competitive in classroom discussions, and if I challenged him to do some silly thing like balancing a yard stick on his nose,(I could do it easily) he went home and worked at it until he could do it. He was, at the same time, quiet and introspective, respectful and polite. After a few weeks of ping pong, Peter stayed a few second after class and said to me, “ I hear you are a really good ping pong player.” Being me, instead of being humble, said, “Yeah, I guess I am pretty good.” In Peter's kindest way he said that he would love to play me sometime. We arranged a day after school and went down for the games. I got my special paddle that I brought from home and I noticed Peter taking a paddle out of a padded pouch. I thought that was pretty ostentatious. We began to warm up and get more serious and I noted that Peter handles himself rather well at the table. Finally near the end of the warm-up period, I had the opportunity to hit a monster slam to his backhand. He was standing 3 or 4 feet away from the table and caught the ball a foot or so off the floor and fired a more vicious backhand to my backhand and caught the tip of the corner. I never knew what hit me. We played two games and I believe the score were something like 21-4 and 21-5, I improved the second game. After two, I confided to Peter that I was sure that neither of us were probably enjoying the games. Peter in his most polite manner said, “Thank you, mister McAdams for taking your time with me. I'm pretty sure he was not mocking me, PRETTY sure.