Get Your Ex Back

Ping-pong is not our only competition. My cousin and me were always competitive… perhaps too combative. It might be as little as who might consume food quicker or eat a higher quantity… who could consume food slower or less. It did not matter. If there was a way one person could best the other in something, we would contend.

Regrettably, the tiny abode my wife and I bought does not have a lot of space for the various manners my cousin and I wish to compete. After much deliberation, we finally settled on a pool table with one of the table tennis conversion tops. Basically this provides us the capacity to enjoy either billiards or ping-pong on a single table in the same space.

So now our notorious rivalry continues. Of course, he invariably kvetches that it isn’t the real thing. Even though he ordinarily trumps me in pocket billiards, each time we place the table tennis conversion top upon the pool table, it seems his game errs.

To put it plainly, I think it’s because I am just plain the superior ping-pong player. But regrettably, he has too many excuses. The elevation is not correct. The proportions are off. The list goes on. So I got out the measuring tape. The elevation and dimensions were spot on to the official table tennis proportions. Then he postulated the table caused the wrong bounce; that in some manner the billiard table beneath affected the velocity and elevation of the ball bounce.

So we investigated the official bounce measurement (yes, there is an official bounce measurement). It is for every 30 centimeters of drop, there should be a 23 centimeters bounce. We tested the bounce in over a dozen locations on the conversion top. In each place the ball bounced virtually perfectly straight up and nearly exactly 23 centimeters high. So you see, ping pong conversion tops do a perfectly good job replicating a strong game of ping pong. And my first cousin has no excuses. I am simply the greater ping pong player.