Ping Pong Balls Are a Seasonal Item

Last night my stepdaughter played hostess to five of her college aged female friends for a sleepover. One of the requisite activities for a gathering of young adults these days is the game of Beer Pong. Though I have witnessed the game being played on other occasions I was mostly unfamiliar with how the game is actually played and it’s myriad of rules.

As with any college drinking game, the rules appear to be subject to regional interpretation and can be fluidly applied, so to speak.

In any event, as we were preparing for the arrival of her guests, we belatedly discovered that we had no ping pong balls in the house. Mama Wordbones had ditched the old ping pong table before we moved into our new home two years ago and with it went the stockpile of ping pong balls. I volunteered to make a quick run down to the Target store at the Long Gate Shopping Center in Ellicott City to get some.

After three or four passes through the sporting goods aisles failed to reveal any ping pong balls I sought out the assistance of one of the red shirted employees. The Target guy went back over the same turf I had exhaustedly examined and reached the same conclusion that there were not any ping pong balls in the sporting goods section.

He reached for his walkie talkie and called in for assistance, “Does anyone know if we carry ping pong balls?”

“It’s a seasonal item, we only carry them in the winter season.”

Interesting. While I can understand that the game of ping pong is more likely to be played indoors in the winter, it still occurred to me that on a day when the heat index soars over 100 degrees, ping pong playing indoors in a cool basement could be a welcome respite from the heat.

It is also likely that across this fair county of ours, in the homes where college students have returned for the summer, beer pong players will be practicing their game to stay in shape for the return to college in the fall.

It might be time for Target to rethink the seasonality of this product.