The Secret Life of a Ping-Pong Wizard (6 page)

Papa Pete ate his hot dog in three bites like he always does: front, middle, and end, wiping his big mustache for dribbles of mustard or bun crumbs.

“How's the old handlebars, Hankie?” he said. “Anything hanging off them?”

“You're all clear,” I answered. Papa Pete made me promise a long time ago that if he ever had anything hanging off his handlebar mustache, I'd tell him right away. It's a big responsibility, but I love it that he trusts me to do it.

I walked and ate at the same time, and by the time I reached the last bite, we were at the corner of 81st and Broadway. We turned left as I stuffed the last piece of hot dog into my mouth. I like to leave a little bit of the frankfurter hanging out of the end of the bun so I can save the best bite for last.

“Here's the place,” Papa Pete said, pointing to a stairway that led down into a subterranean storefront door.

“There's no sign,” I noticed. Of course there wasn't. I mean, what's a sign above a Ping-Pong club going to say, the All-Night Ping-Pong Emporium? Who wants to be seen going into that?

I heard the room before I saw it.
Ping
, then
pong
.
Ping. Pong. Ping. Pong.
Multiply that times twelve, which was the number of Ping-Pong tables in the large, well-lit room, and you'll have the sound that filled my ears as we walked in.

At each table there were two people hitting the ball back and forth to each other. And when I say hitting, I mean smacking it. Ping-Pong balls were shooting across the nets like cannonballs.

Boy, was I surprised. I have to admit, I never knew the game was so fast.

And while I'm at it, let me admit another thing: I expected all the people in there to be really old, like forty-eight or fifty-one. But when I looked around, I was stunned by who was playing there. At the first table, a huge man with dreadlocks flying all over the place was playing a woman in white shorts. Her hand moved so fast, you couldn't even see it holding on to the paddle.

“That's Wei Chang,” Papa Pete whispered. “She played in the 1996 Olympics for China.”

At another table, there was a large, hairy man with an accent that sounded like Count Dracula's playing another hairy man wearing a baseball cap. They were playing fast and furiously. And here's the amazing thing: The guy in the baseball cap was in a wheelchair. That's right, you heard me. He'd pop a wheelie in order to get to the corner of the table to get the ball. And when he hit the ball, it had a wicked spin.

There were all kinds of people playing, and a few others sitting in folding chairs watching. At the table on the very end, I noticed a tall Asian man playing a little kid. And when I say little, I mean, standing on a box little
.

It was Sam Chin, Mason's friend from kindergarten.

“Hey, Sam,” I hollered. “It's me, Hank!”

“Shhhhh,” Papa Pete whispered. “You never distract a player in the middle of a game.”

Wow, these Ping-Pong people take their game very seriously.

“But I know him,” I told Papa Pete. “He goes to my school.”

“His father is the head teacher and owner of the club,” Papa Pete said, pointing to the tall man rallying with Sam. “He's internationally ranked.”

“Wow,” I said. “He must be really good.”

Before Papa Pete could answer, the tall man put his paddle on top of the Ping-Pong ball to keep it from rolling off the table and walked over to where we were standing. “Hello, Pete,” he said. “And this is . . . ?”

“My grandson, Hank.”

“Welcome to the club, Hank,” he said. “My name is Winston Chin.” He shook my hand. He had a big hand. Mine got lost in it.

“I see you're a soccer player,” Mr. Chin said, looking at the cleats I had slung over my shoulder.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I've been known to kick the ball a ways.”

“We have many good athletes here,” Mr. Chin said.

The people in there didn't exactly look like athletes. I mean, you didn't see a lot of big muscles or sweaty headbands or expensive tennis shoes. And certainly no big-muscled guys in ironed soccer shorts. They looked like regular people in street clothes, only with Ping-Pong paddles in their hands.

“I go to school with Sam,” I said. “At PS 87.”

“Come over and hit with him,” Mr. Chin said. “You can use my paddle and I'll give you a few pointers.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I'm not really into patio sports. I'm more of an outdoorsy, grassy sports kind of guy.”

“We don't consider table tennis a patio sport here,” Mr. Chin said. “It's highly competitive. It's a sport that requires the reflexes of the bobcat, the speed of the cheetah, and the craftiness of the fox.”

“Wow, that's a lot of animals,” I laughed.

“They should play this at the zoo.”

I cracked myself up. I thought my joke was hysterical. When I stopped laughing, I noticed that Mr. Chin had never started. Even Papa Pete didn't crack a smile. Whoops, I guess I put my foot right in my mouth, tennis shoe and all.

“Okay,” I said, feeling bad that perhaps I had insulted Mr. Chin and his club. “I'll give it a try.”

I followed Mr. Chin to the table where Sam was still standing on his box waiting for me.

Thank goodness for small favors.

1. I can't even see the ball as it whizzes by me.

2. I can hear it, but that's totally annoying—all that pinging and ponging gets on your nerves.

3. No one I know who is anyone I want to know ever even mentions Ping-Pong—except Papa Pete. But he talks about a lot of weird stuff, like whether green bell peppers taste the same as red bell peppers.

4. Every regular ball I know of is made of rubber. I can't figure out what Ping-Pong balls are even made of—besides air.

5. Everybody in the Ping-Pong club was at least forty-eight, except for Sam, and he was five. I didn't see any other ten-year-olds there.

6. Everyone else I know plays dribbling sports. The only dribbling in Ping-Pong is the kind that comes from your mouth if you spill your 7UP.

7. You can't convince me that Ping-Pong is a real sport. I mean, when was the last time you saw an article about the World Series of Ping-Pong on the sports page?

8. My Uncle Gary likes to play Ping-Pong at the beach in his Speedos and orange rubber flip-flops. Enough said.

9. If Nick McKelty ever gets word that I'm a Ping-Pong player, he'll call me a pencil-neck, paddle-toting, weird-sport-playing geekoid. I'd rather not hear that for the rest of my life.

10. I don't think I really need to come up with a tenth reason, because I'm thinking 1-9 are quite enough to make my point.

OKAY, YOU KNOW that list you just read? Ignore it. Forget you ever laid eyes on it. I'm sorry I wasted your time with it.

Why? Because Ping-Pong is fun! And not just regular, everyday kind of fun, either. It is fast and furious fun.

Mr. Chin showed me two different ways to hold the paddle. One is where you have to shake hands with it. Shaking hands with a piece of wood is a weird concept to wrap your mind around, but once you get that hello right, the paddle becomes your best friend.

The other way is called a pen hold. You have to slip the handle between your index and middle finger and hold it backward. Mr. Chin tried to show me that hold at least eight times, but I had to concentrate so hard on where my fingers were supposed to be that it never got comfortable. He didn't yell at me, though, or make me feel bad, like Coach Gilroy did.

“We'll go with the handshake hold,” he just said, “if that's what makes you comfortable.” And that was that.

I took the paddle and stood in back of the table.

“Back up, Hank. You're standing too close,” Mr. Chin said.

“Sam's just a little guy,” I whispered to him. “He's going to hit it real soft, so I want to be close.”

“Don't be so sure,” Mr. Chin said, and smiled. “Serve it up, Sammy.”

Whoosh!
In one swift move, Sam sent the ball careening over the net. I'm sure it hit my side of the table, because I heard it, but I swear to you, I never saw it go by. I felt so stupid just standing there holding my paddle. I never even got a chance to take a swing at the ball. My arm never left my side.

“Ping-Pong is a game of quick reflexes,” Mr. Chin said.

Sam hit another ball to me, and this time I lunged for it. It just hit my paddle, went flying across the room, and bounced off the far wall.

I turned and looked at Papa Pete.

“Practice makes perfect, Hankie,” was all he said.

“Are you right-handed?” Mr. Chin asked me.

“You're right,” I said. “And I'm right. Right and right.”

“Good, so you put your left foot slightly in front of your right foot, spread your feet shoulder width apart, and watch the ball as it comes to you. The most important thing is to concentrate on the ball.”

“Hank, are you listening to me?” It was Mr. Chin, who must have noticed that I was out there driving my brain around town.

“Yup,” I said, pulling my brain out of the garage and putting it back in my head where it belonged.

“When you hit the ball this time, follow through. Your paddle should wind up in front of your face so that you're looking at the blade, which is the part of the paddle you hit with.”

Mr. Chin was a really good teacher, because when Sam served me the next ball, I hit it exactly where it was supposed to go. It made the perfect sound. I pinged!

Unfortunately, Sammy ponged, and when the ball came sailing back at me, I missed the next shot. I didn't care. I was really excited to have hit the ball correctly. It felt smooth as glass.

“You must always remember to practice the Three Cs, Hank,” Mr. Chin said. “Concentration. Control. Confidence.”

He made those three Cs sound so simple. If only they were.

I don't know where the next hour went, but wherever it went, it went someplace really fun. I played with Sam for another fifteen minutes, until his mom came to pick him up for dinner. Then the guy with the dreadlocks came over to my table.

“Hey, little mon. I'll rally with you,” he said in an accent that sounded like he was singing.

“But you're really good,” I said.

“This is how you get good, mon,” he said. “Rally with everyone. That's what I did as a boy back in Jamaica.”

Maurice—that was his name—played with me for another half hour. At first I was nervous, because I kept missing the ball and having to chase it all over the club. But he gave me lots of good pointers, and by the time we were finished, I could actually return the ball three or four times in a row.

“Hankie,” Papa Pete said at last. “We have to go now. It's dinnertime.”

“Just a few minutes more,” I begged.

“Yeah, mon. Hank and I are in a groove,” Maurice said.

“I don't want to make your mother mad at me,” Papa Pete said. “We'll come back another time.”

While I was looking for my backpack, Mr. Chin came up to me. “Here,” he said, handing me a Ping-Pong paddle with red rubber on one side and black rubber on another side. “You can borrow this paddle for a while. Keep it with you. Hold it. Let it become your friend.”

“Wow—thanks, Mr. Chin.”

“And here are two balls for you to practice with. Bounce them on the paddle and against a wall until you start to get the feel of it.”

I couldn't believe everyone there was being so nice to me. Not like at the soccer field, when Coach Gilroy didn't even say good-bye to me that afternoon. Actually, he did kind of say good-bye, if you can call “Remember to bring your game face to next practice, Zipzer” a good-bye.

As we pushed open the door to climb the stairs back up to 81st Street, I was in the best mood.

“That was so cool,” I said to Papa Pete. “Do you think if I practice really hard, I could beat Maurice?”

“It could happen,” Papa Pete answered. “Although he is the Jamaican national Ping-Pong champion.”

“He's the best player in all of Jamaica?”

“Last I checked, that's what champion means.”

Wow. I, Hank Daniel Zipzer, just played the best of the best of the best. And he thought I was okay.

“Papa Pete, do you think I'm good enough to enter a tournament?”

“Not yet, Hankie. But there's always tomorrow.”

As we walked down Broadway toward home, I was careful to hop over all the cracks in the sidewalk. I was making a wish, the same wish over and over, and I wanted it to come true.

I wished that I would win a Ping-Pong tournament and become the Ping-Pong Wizard of New York City. In my mind, I could already see the trophy. It was big. I mean, really big. It was so big that I could use it for a jungle gym if I wanted.

I couldn't wait to get home and start practicing.