Our Ping Pong Table

Literary, lazy, unsporty, unoutdoorsy, and seriously unlikely to reform our habits much,

we bought it feeling flush one summer, and resolving to have more family fun than whatever we’d been having.

We read the warning: Someassembly is required. The very thought of that made us cross and tired

but we put our heads together, tore hunks of Styrofoam, and built the big, “all-weather,” eight-legged, hope-green wreck

while watching unmarked, tiny, essential pieces sent all the way from China as placidly they went

irretrievably rolling through slats in our old deck. Nothing to do about it. In a way, that was consoling.

How many years ago was that? ten?—and how few games did we play each year? One day we stopped. But when?

I think I was the first to notice poison oak where the balls were prone to land. After the net frame broke

we knew it was the end, though there were nights we’d throw a tablecloth or two on top for a barbecue.

All-weather? So far it’s stood as a tottering monument to the bumblers we remain; it’s stood there in the rain

and, through the kitchen window in winter, as an efficient means to measure snow. I’ve liked that. That’s been good.