Cousin Competition and Stiga Ping-Pong
Ping pong is not our only contention. My first cousin and I are always competitive… perhaps excessively combative. It could be as trivial as whom could consume food quicker or just plain consume more… who could consume food slower or in smaller amounts. It did not matter. If there was a means one mortal could best the other in anything, we would compete.
Unfortunately, the small home my wife and I purchased doesn’t have a lot of space for the various ways my first cousin and I like to compete. After much calculation, we at long last settled on a pool table with one of the table tennis conversion tops. Basically this gives us the ability to play either billiards or ping-pong on a single table in the same room.
Thus now our infamous rivalry continues. Naturally, he incessantly kvetches that it is not the real thing. Even though he usually trumps me in pool, each instance we set the table tennis conversion top upon the billiard table, it seems his game drifts.
To put it simply, I think it’s because I am just simply the greater ping pong player. But unfortunately, he makes too many rationalizations. The elevation isn’t correct. The dimensions are off. The list goes on. Thus I got out the measuring tape. The proportions and height were spot on to the official table tennis proportions. Then he claimed the table had the incorrect bounce; that in some way the pool table below affected the speed and elevation of the ball bounce.
So we investigated the official bounce measurement (indeed, there is an official bounce measurement). It’s for every 30 cm of drop, there should be a 23 cm bounce. We tested the bounce in over a dozen locations on the conversion top. In every last spot the ball bounced almost perfectly straight up and nearly exactly 23 centimeters high. So you see, table tennis conversion tops do a perfectly good job duplicating a strong game of ping pong. And my cousin has no excuses. I am simply the better ping pong player.