Milos

A couple of weeks ago while I was sitting around waiting to play ping-pong at the local youth center, a balding man in his mid-40s with a slight overbite and over-sized, thin-rimmed glasses walked in and casually demanded to be next on the table. He was wearing what appeared to be 90s era Shaqs and a faded windbreaker sweat-suit. Nothing fit.

As soon as he managed to get a hold of the ball, he began to dictate rules for how the game was to be played from that point on. It was actually pretty great to watch all the kids faces as they tried to pretend they would ever follow those guidelines again. Odd as it was though, I actually agreed with most of his rule changes. Finally, some one else thought allowing triple faults and playing to 5 was ridiculous.

Regardless, our guest continued to talk quite a big game and rejoiced in mentioning how skilled he once was back before middle age slowed his brilliance. At this point I realized that this dude had been holding the ball hostage for almost ten minutes, a time span that could have easily fielded 4 or 5 'normal' bzou rules matches. Soon enough, however, he began to warm up and one thing became instantly obvious. This dude was terrible.

It wasn't just that he could not keep the ball on the table, it was also the disturbing amount of effort he was putting into trying to do so. The abundance of swing-miss-almost-fall-over attempts at playing the game was simply too much to handle. And keep in mind, this is still warm up. This is also about the time that I noticed this dude was a lot like Milos from that Seinfeld episode.

Luckily, the dude's opponent happened to be a nice kid that, though very good, would have a sense of decency and not slam the ball at every possible juncture. In fact, the exact opposite happened. This kid was playing Milos so safe, with nothing but constant high lobs, that eventually some of those wild swings began to connect. Final score: overly ecstatic adult 5, bewildered youth 3. A ridiculous smirk emerged on Milos' face as he raised his arms in triumph.

Being that ping-pong here is almost always a king-of-the-court style affair, Milos had to face at least one more contender before being allowed to sit. This kid was not nearly as passive. Making only one mistake, kid number 2 assaulted Milos to a chest smashing degree. Final score: unrepentant youth 5, pretending he lost on purpose Milos 1.

As he came to sit down next to me I noticed streams of sweat leaking from all over his face. A boy was sent to fetch him a bottle of water. A total of 14 points had been played.