Ping Pong Pyro

Growing up, I was always close to my cousins. My mom and her sisters and brother were close, so therefore, I was always around them. There was one cousin in particular I was always with (the one closest to my age). I never had a brother, so he was the closest thing I had to one. We grew up spending the night at each others house almost every weekend. He had an older and younger brother, so we always hung out with each other. I have tons of stories about our ‘misadventures,’ but today, friends, I shall share one story in particular that almost killed us…but not the way you may think. We were complete goobers. Let’s dive in, shall we?

The year was 1993 and I was in 8th grade. At Christmas I was lucky enough for my parents (well, Santa) to gift me a pool table. My dad and I loved shooting pool, and it was all I had wanted for years, so that year my dad decided to get us one in order to save money on quarters we were spending at a local pool shooting joint down the road.

I can’t even begin to know how many hours were spent shooting pool in our house. I loved playing with pops, as well as my cousins and friends that would visit. We were always competitive in everything we did, so we always looked for things to play and compete in. Shooting pool was no different, and since we had a pool table now, I could use the money I earned from working on farms and such to get something to add to our pool table…something me and my cousin loved to do. I could get a ping pong table to place on top of the pool table! How cool would that be?

I remember asking my dad about it and him telling me that it was my money I had earned and to do what I wanted with it, so he took me to JC Penny’s and I ordered one through their catalog. It was delivered to them within 2 weeks time. My dad took me to pick it up and from that point forward, my cousins and friends and I could shoot pool, and when we grew tired of that, we could play ping pong. Every kids dream!

So…on one particular weekend, during the winter months, my cousin spent the night with me. When this happened, as I’m sure all kids do, we were allowed to stay up late…as long as we didn’t bother anyone. We stayed up late. We ate junk food. We drank sodas. We shot pool. We played video games. More importantly, we decided to play ping pong.

Now before I get into how stupid we were, I need to let you all in on something vital to my story. You see, my friends, the room the pool table was located in used to be a garage. When my parents moved into our home, they decided to turn it into a big living room. The room was pretty big, so it was hard to keep warm in the winter, even with central heat and air. Because of that, my mom and dad put a gas heater into the room. It was an old gas heater, but boy, did it work! I was not allowed to mess with it, probably for obvious reasons, so my dad would always ask if we wanted it off or on before we went down there, and whatever we decided, that’s how it was to stay until the following day…below is the best picture I could find of the heater. What follows that is the remainder of my story.

As my cousin and I were finishing up our multiple games of ping pong, we noticed it was way after midnight and we still wanted to do something. We decided to test our ‘ping pong accuracy.’ We wanted to know who could put the ball where they wanted to, and the only way to test that, is to challenge the other to hit an object with the ping pong ball. What was our target? I’m so glad you asked. You see, friends, we decided that our best and only target that night was to be the small space between the screen and top of the heater. If you could hit a ball into that space, you were the winner. Did I mention that we had asked for the heater to stay on that night?

My cousin and I alternated turns for about 5 minutes until the inevitable happened. On this night, my cousin was more accurate than your favorite goober. I had previously ‘just missed’ on my attempt. My cousin told me he was going to make it happen on his turn, and he did. His shot was smooth. One hit on the table from the paddle, over the net, and right into the tiny area we were aiming for. We both jumped up to celebrate before we realized what we had done.

The ball hit the ceramic plate on the inside of the heater and bounced down behind the tiny screen, staying in the heater instead of ‘popping’ back out like we had originally thought it would. We ran over to see the ball ‘sitting’ in the heater. We stood and stared, not only at the ball, but at each other. We both were thinking the same thing. How do we get this ball out?

It was too hot to put our hand in, plus, we weren’t even allowed to touch the heater. About the time my cousin asked, “What do we do?,” the ball decided to start, well, bubbling. We were both amazed by this and knew we needed to act fast, but were too young and too ‘gooberish’ to know what to do. It was then that one of the bubbles on the ping pong ball popped.

When it popped, it caught fire and turned into a flame. We jumped back and watched the ball disintegrate from the flames and turn into black smoke. We turned off the lights and quickly ran away to my room and shut the door to discuss further action.

We stayed in my room for about 5-10 minutes before we decided to turn off the heater. We knew we were going to get in trouble, but we didn’t want the house to burn down. We snuck back out of my room with a flashlight and made out way back to the big living room. When we shined the light at the heater, we saw a small black circle and some ashes where the ball used to be. I turned off the heater, and when I did, there was a loud pop, and we again, ran away to my room. We tried to come up with a story to tell in the morning after waking up to keep our trouble to a bare minimum, but couldn’t come up with anything before we fell asleep for the night, scared of what the next day would bring.

My cousin and I awoke to my mom in a panic. She woke us up and told us to go wash our face, something had happened to the heater overnight. My cousin and I looked at each other and I noticed the skin around his nostrils were black. According to him, mine were too. We both washed our face and walked to the kitchen to be questioned by my dad whether or not we touched the heater the night before. I responded with one word. “Why?”

Dad began to tell us that when he woke up that morning, it was unusually cold in the house, especially since he left the heater on. He went to the bathroom and after looking in the mirror, he noticed the skin around his nostrils were black. He woke up my mom and she looked the same. He decided to check out the heater and when he walked in the room, black soot was on the white walls in the corner where the heater was located. The soot was so bad, it even covered the goose my father had mounted in the room. He didn’t even question if we had made this happen. He thought the heater had broken because it was off and soot was everywhere. My cousin and I didn’t say a word. We knew we were out of trouble. We almost killed everyone, but at least there would not be a punishment or beating.

Year’s went by before my cousin and I told my dad the truth about what happened that night. He could only shake his head. He was upset because those heaters were expensive and he threw away a perfectly good heater. He also had to buy paint and get rid of the goose he had mounted. He was not happy for a few days.

Looking back, my cousin and I were 2 of the biggest goobers I know. What we did was stupid and could have been a lot worse. Fortunately, for us and my family, it wasn’t. If you can take anything from this, my friends, maybe leave well enough alone. Enjoy the game for what it is and don’t worry about who is the best at everything…it could end up burning your ass (or at the very least, leave you with darker nostrils). See you next week!