Ping-pong is not our only competition. My first cousin and I were always competitive… perchance excessively combative. It could be as little as whom could consume food swifter or just plain consume more… whom could eat slower or in smaller amounts. It didn’t matter. If there was a way one individual could outdo the other in something, we would contend.
Unfortunately, the tiny house my wife and I purchased does not have a ton of space for the many ways my first cousin and I like to compete. After much deliberation, my wife and I finally settled on a pool table with a table tennis conversion top. Essentially this gives us the ability to enjoy either billiards or ping-pong on a single table in the same space.
Thus now our notorious rivalry remains. Naturally, he incessantly complains that it is not the true thing. Even though he usually trumps me in pocket billiards, each instance we set the table tennis conversion top upon the pool table, it seems his game drifts.
To put it plainly, I think it’s because I’m just simply the better ping-pong player. But unfortunately, he makes too many rationalizations. The elevation is not right. The dimensions are incorrect. The list goes on. So I procured the measuring tape. The elevation and dimensions were spot on to the official table tennis proportions. Then he postulated the table had the wrong bounce; that in some way the pool table beneath affected the velocity and elevation of the ball bounce.
So we researched the official bounce measurement (indeed, there is an official bounce measurement). It is for every 30 cm of drop, there ought to be a 23 cm bounce. We tested the bounce in over a dozen positions on the conversion top. In every spot the ball bounced almost perfectly straight up and almost precisely 23 cm high. So you realize, ping pong conversion tops do a perfectly good job duplicating a good game of table tennis. And my cousin has no excuses. I am simply the superior ping pong player.
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