The Air Hockey Table

The other day, Cortlen came home from his friend's house with two questions for me:
1. Who is Indiana Jones?
2. Where could a boy like himself get a leather whip?

Evidently, my son's friend had an Indiana Jones video game and in it the action hero did lots of whipping. Because I wasn't sure what other weapons Indiana had at his disposal, I thought that it might be a good idea to steer the next play date toward our house.

"Why don't we have Danny come over here?" I suggested.
"There's nothing to do at our house," whined the boy with no toys, "Except play Twister."

I didn't like the tone used to describe the timeless party game, but I let it go.

While it is impossible to compete with a Harrison Ford avatar, the delicious treat that I wrangled away from the thrift store yesterday afternoon--a "vintage" air hockey table--comes pretty darn close.




The price tag on the fake wood-paneled beauty read $30. The store employee who was taking his cigarette break on top of the table told me that that he had just unloaded it from some one's van ten minutes earlier. I was pretty sure the van to which he was referring was still in the parking lot; there were orange curtains on all of its windows.

Making sure not to make physical contact with the table or the body draped across it, I used the preexisting condition clause to bargain the man down to $25. To prevent someone from snatching my prize away from me before I could pay for it, I asked the man to use his walkie talkie to provide a physical description of me to the cashier and inform her that I was on my way up.

It took the better part of the afternoon to 1) Haul the table home 2) Scrub away the memory of the orange curtains 3) Draw straws to determine who would play in the opening match 3) Put the sore loser in time-out 4) Put one of the two winners in time-out for taunting the sore loser.

Once an acceptable rotation had been established, I went upstairs to feed the baby. When I returned, the air hockey table was alone in the corner, crying.

"Why aren't you playing with it?" I asked my three sports enthusiasts. No one answered. They were too busy contorting their bodies on a plastic tarp covered with colored dots.








P.S. I'm not suggesting that you do this, but I got a whole lot more than I bargained for when I searched "twister and image" on Yahoo. Evidently, some people like to play Twister naked. In case you are wondering, I am not one of them.