During COVID, we upgraded our ping pong table in the garage to a table tennis table, from a table that was warping with screws popping to a table that was two parts, that folded smoothly up and rolled easily, that had an official gauge to measure the height of the net.

And they are different, ping pong and table tennis, the internet full of ping pong being a social sport, table tennis an olympic sport.

I hear the sound of a hot air balloon outside, that whoosh of hot air rushing into the balloon, but it isn’t any like a traditional balloon, so it must have some type of olympic name, some way to say your balloon is social, mine is distinguished.

You could go down to the gym when you were done with lunch in eighth grade, or stay and talk with your friends, or go into the auditorium and play ping pong.

I found a fourth thing to do: sit in an auditorium seat and read. 

And a fifth:  get your friends to sit together in the auditorium and giggle about the boy sitting all by himself.

And a sixth: two of these friends could go up to that boy and see if they could get him to talk, a sport of a kind, at least a challenge, one with winners and losers.

My second-grade friend Chris had a vertical ping pong table–the ball tied to a string that swung over top and bounced off each side, the players hitting it with a plastic paddle, winning a point somehow, someway.

We only lived there in that small Ohio town one year. We played the game for about ten minutes once, then went outside to ride bikes, to swim in his small pond, to throw a baseball back and forth.

But that must have been baseball, not Baseball, swimming not Swimming, biking not Biking.

Chris was my Best Friend, and when we moved to Indiana after second grade was over, we kept in touch, the way third graders could in 1975, with letters and once or twice a phone call.

Two years later Chris passed from aplastic anemia. Walking through the receiving line and speaking with his parents, I found out that he had left me that table.

And I remember sitting in the church during his service, the pastor mentioning that Chris had made a different Best Friend in the months before he died, one that would give him Eternal Salvation, and if we wanted, could be our Best Friend too.

I started to talk to people in ninth grade and eventually invited them over to my house. We had a ping pong table in our dark and damp basement, the ceilings not nearly table tennis regulation height, the net a sad saggy barrier between the tables, the plastic paddles covered in sandpaper.

I remember playing my friend Paul there that year, for some reason wanting to win–what was so obviously a social game–that I once, missing an easy point, put both hands on the table and kicked the ceiling.

Paul took me to his church, where I met other best friends, and during our summers we would go to summer church camp where, I discovered, ping pong was a Big Thing.

The tournament that summer after my senior year was Sharpied on a piece of paper thumb tacked to a vertical board near the dining hall. 

There were serious rules for these games–toss the ball up at least six inches to serve, make sure your serve goes off the end of the table.

Nick and I played for the championship that summer, in front of, it seemed, the entire camp, each Serve nailbiting, each Return full of spin and hope.

My friends came up afterward and clapped my back. I saw Nick’s friends console him. 

My father-in-law had a table in his basement, sometimes set up to hold the tools and materials for a project, mostly, though, folded up and put to the side.

But then he realized I liked to play and we began playing whenever Wendy and I visited, our skill levels about the same, my game all about spin, his game all about placement.

When he moved and gave us the table, we began to play here at our house, recently renovated with a new garage. 

Hot air balloons are technically called  “Montgolfier balloons” after the man who invented them. The one I heard earlier is gone now, drifting somewhere south east with the wind, a companion in a car following the flight as well as they can.

And I’m remembering now a different summer camp in Vermont, where I met Wendy, who became my Best Friend, where a hot air balloon took off several times a week each summer, sometimes crossing above the lake, one time dipping the Gondola in the water, the entire camp cheering from the dining hall.

My son Theodore and I play ping pong now almost every day, his summer internship having a table where people play at lunch. He told me that it isn’t an official table, that the workers had found a table and some space, had put on a net and began to play.

And there is nothing official about how we play either, even though our net is regulation height, the table height official, the surface smooth with clear lines. We serve off the sides of the table, we count a hit off the ceiling as long as it lands in play.

Yesterday he beat me five games in a row. I didn’t kick the ceiling. There was no crowd cheering. There were no middle school kids whispering about us. 

Just me and my son playing ping pong, at the end of each game saying, “Just one more.”

The sound the ball makes is as distinct as a Mongolfier Balloon, and someday, writing a poem about getting older, perhaps, my train of thought disjointed, bouncing here and there, I’ll hear that sound and laugh at the thought that table tennis could possibly be more important than ping pong. That it matters whether you win or lose.

And I’ll think of the many games I’ve played with the people I have loved and sometimes lost.

And I’ll wish that I could get them to play again, just one more.