Chinatown Ping Pong

After months and months of saying that we would go, Colin and I finally made our way over to Oakland's Chinatown for Ping Pong Thursday at the neighborhood rec center. I was a little nervous. I thought I would be the laughing stock of the rec center, that all the old Chinese men would want to disown me as one of their own race for not being able to swat that little ball like a badass.

When we got there, the place smelled of pizza. There were eight tables set up and six were taken by older people, mostly men and mostly Asian. There was one other woman, a Cantonese-speaking lady the age of my mom, there. Colin and I chose the table closest to the wall and the most out of view of all the other players. I pulled out my paddles from my bag and a little orange ball (five out of the six other tables of players were also playing with orange balls).

We started to play. Leisurely at first, chit-chatting along the way. I started to sweat and could feel my glasses slipping down my nose. Colin was making me run from one edge of the table to the other, as he was swatting the ball to opposite corners. I lunged and stretched to reach them. He also was hitting low and hard, so that I was at least three feet away from the edge of the table trying to return his hits. I felt like I was starting to look like the other players there and a little like Forrest Gump but not nearly as good a player.

We were getting better and taking more risks. Then, we started to get sloppy. My legs were getting tired. My armpits were sweaty. My balls kept missing the table and would bounce toward the little barriers set up to prevent renegade balls from travelling too far. I couldn't return his serves. We had been playing for an hour and a half and we were getting tired. It was time to call it quits.

I never guessed that ping pong could be so exhausting. But, looking at the other sets of players on that gym floor and all the sweat that soaked their shirts, they certainly knew how much of a workout it could be.

As Colin and I walked out of the rec center on our way to dinner (of burgers and beer), Colin saw a sign: in honor of the Olympics, ping pong would be held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays nights (rather than just Thursdays) and free for the entire month of September. We would be back for three nights next week.