In ping pong, as in life, trust yourself
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- July 15, 2023
- 842
As hurtful insults go, it probably wouldn’t make the Top 10 that my college girlfriend ever uttered, but I’ll admit that it was creative.
“You,” she said, in the midst of one of our titanic fights, a common occurrence in the off-campus house that I shared with five (or six) other guys, depending, “are nothing but a narcissistic ectomorph.”
Just count the syllables: Seven of them, not bad for a two-word jab.
The precise context of that particular battle of wits has been lost in the mists of bygone nothingness, but I can attest with certainty that she was proud of herself and the way she dropped that nasty bomb.
As a second-semester English major with a string of dean’s list honors stretching back to before Dick Nixon resigned in disgrace, I was no stranger to the verbal thrust-and-parry that intelligent students treated as a competitive joust, one with a single winner.
At Notre Dame you could always count on someone to challenge your position on any issue, be it the merits of the Sunday morning brunch served at the dining hall — best scrambled eggs ever — or Patti Smith’s second album, one that didn’t dare imitate “Horses.”
“I think ‘Radio Ethiopia’ is a risk, for sure,” I said in front of a group that had assembled in the living room of our communal abode in a sad South Bend neighborhood, “but when you consider that Patti’s all about evolving as an artist, it just works for me.”
That kind of vacuous word salad was eminently digestible back then, a time when we of the moon-landing generation had immense faith in our singular and collective birthright to aspire to be the best, whether it was in an academic setting or simply listening to an LP.
But when I look and listen back all those years ago, it becomes apparent to me that my girlfriend called me selfish and skinny.
You’ll probably have no sympathy for someone who grew up thin and tall, the prototypical 98-pound weakling made rather famous in the ads you’d find at the back of a comic book, the ones that promised you could be a Charles Atlas-he man if you sent many dollars to some address and receive a weight-gain supplement.
I can’t remember the name of the miracle product, and that’s probably for the best, seeing as it didn’t do jack squat for me.
Maybe it was my hummingbird metabolism, perhaps it was inevitable genetics or it could have been that those milk shakes I inhaled were just another scam, akin to buying sea monkeys or Mexican jumping beans, the kind of come-ons kids couldn’t resist.
“You’re just the way God made you,” Mom would say in her most comforting tone, the one she saved for those times when one of her children had veered into the danger zone. “Do you understand?”
All I knew is I was sick and tired of being made fun of for the way I looked, like the time I was taking a walk with my sister after supper at our aunt’s house and the way verbal taunts flew my way.
“Hey, scarecrow!” I heard coming from a gang of older guys gathered on a front porch. “Better be careful … strong wind’s gonna come and blow you into the next county, you skinny punk.”
I remember being very self-conscious about my gaunt physique whenever I went to a public swimming area, be it a pool or a lake or a river or an ocean, and the way I’d grab my shoulders with the opposing hands, crossing myself in a protective “X” formation.
Gym class was bad too, what with those humiliating showers afterward, the ones that offered no place to hide a skeletal appearance from prying eyes and stinging barbs that hit home.
But there came a turning point involving, of all things, ping pong.
It was the summer of Bobby Kennedy getting gunned down and the demonstrations in Chicago, a time when the center could not hold, and against that crazy backdrop, my family took a vacation.
It was to a rather bucolic — if passed-its-prime — place called Indian Lake, and we stayed at a once-plush lodging known as Beatley’s, which had been a favored destination for Mom’s family when she was growing up. I liked it immediately, if only for the game room that had several pinball machines and a jukebox, one that had “MacArthur Park” and “Classical Gas” among its many singles.
It also had a table-tennis setup, and I remember sitting there in the screened-in portion of the resort, watching people play a game with which I was unfamiliar. There was one guy who was thinner than me, and he always beat the living crap out of anyone who challenged him, not in a mean way, just proving he was better.
During a lull in the action, I approached him, wanting to find out how he did what he did the way he did it. He said only two words.
“Trust yourself.”
In the years that followed, Dad would construct a ping pong table for us, and we would play a lot, especially during the summer months, when the patio would be the site of tournaments around Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day, and I won tons.
I never did gain much weight, even after those festive hamburger and hot dog cookouts, but I learned to trust myself — to often like myself — even when I got called names like “stick” and “slats.”
Wishing now I’d played ping pong against that college girlfriend.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun at his Facebook page, where we play for five bucks a game.