Happy New Year.  Today let’s review yet another time in my life I experienced an enhanced level of involuntary humility.

The summer before my senior year of high school I was fortunate enough to be chosen for a program for Kentucky high school students.  I was invited to spend a few weeks living on the UK campus and taking a small number of classes (not for college credit).  It’s a pretty neat program that’s been going on for roughly thirty years now.  Some enterprising legislator had the bright idea (or borrowed it from another state) that perhaps something like this would encourage students to attend in-state schools, or give them a head start on college that would benefit our commonwealth somewhere down the road.

This program was a really good experience for me.  It was sort of a practice run for college without the pressure of the whole grade point average thing.  One important lesson I learned is that if you get insufficient sleep for enough consecutive nights, it is in fact possible to fall asleep upright on a science lab chair in the middle of a lecture.  Another important lesson I learned is that if you’re a seventeen year-old boy and are preparing to spend a chunk of your summer intentionally keeping a respectful distance from ubiquitous smart, cute, high-achieving high school girls, you might want to double-check and make sure your girlfriend back home isn’t going to break up with you upon your return.  Not that I’m bitter.

All the boys in this program lived together in a single dormitory where we discussed deep issues such as life goals, theology, and whether boys or girls had a more closed-minded definition of physical attractiveness.  This last topic eventually led to an experiment wherein every boy or girl in the program was asked who they thought was the best-looking attendee of the opposite sex.  Whichever gender chose the largest number of different individuals as best-looking must therefore have a more open-minded view of physical beauty.

(You might be interested in knowing the results of this non-scientific survey.  I would be delighted to tell you, but I don’t remember.  I think the numbers came out roughly even.  Sadly, all I remember for sure is that the survey did not remain anonymous and my name did not appear on the comprehensive list of boys receiving votes as best-looking.  One of my friends received one vote and found himself unsettled by the knowledge that out of all those girls, there was ONE who thought he was tops.  He could not figure out who she was.  His quest to find her may have led him to some diagnosable disorder by the end of the summer.  Somehow I was not sympathetic to his plight despite the luxury of peaceful assurance that NONE of these girls voted for me).

Perhaps the saddest part of the somewhat humiliating prelude above is that it’s not even the humiliating story I set out to tell you.

The boys’ dormitory had a ping pong table in the basement.  Every night a small crowd would gather to play.  I was pretty good because we had a ping pong table at home.  I even had my parents bring me my favorite paddle when they came for a visit.  Every so often I’d go downstairs and play four or five matches and then just retire undefeated.  I was unbeaten all summer.

(I almost wrote that I was the King Kong of ping pong but then decided it would be a really awkward thing to say.  My feeling is that anything worthy of an eye-roll that is said inside parentheses cannot really be held against the author.  I imagine parentheses as a sort of warm, happy place for the amateur writer.  Like a non-threatening mental Snuggie.  While I’m getting this out of my system let me also say that I have always thought Parentheses would be a great name for the Greek god of the digression).

And then somebody decided to hold a ping pong tournament.  Of course I signed up for this.  What seventeen-year old boy declines an invitation to demonstrate he’s the best at something?  When the tournament pairings came out I checked the list to see when I would eventually meet any of the better players I had encountered.  My first round opponent was a guy who hadn’t even played with us all summer.

When the tournament began I sauntered in with my intimidating, smooth-surfaced, personal ping pong paddle.  It really was much nicer than the cheesy ones lying around the dorm basement.  And then my opponent walked in and I immediately made four key observations:

1. He was also brandishing his own ping pong paddle.
2. He was carrying his own ping-pong paddle in his own ping pong paddle carrying case.
3. I did not know there was such a thing as a case specifically made to carry a ping-pong paddle.  (They already have a handle, after all).
4. A dorm basement full of vanquished foes just may have set me up.

One could easily sense the eagerness of the other boys to witness the epic clash of teenage ping pong titans that was about to transpire.  I feigned nonchalance as my foe unzipped his carrying case.

The kid was good.  He immediately jumped out to a lead.  I was used to playing against kids using what were closer to boat oars than good paddles, and was unprepared to react to his ability to put a lot of spin on the ball.  I had been the only one who could do that.  My dad could apply fairly healthy spin but I hadn’t played against him all summer.  I rallied and crawled back into the match, but continued making too many unforced errors reacting to his spin.  It was a very competitive and fun match the whole way.

In the end, much like the Mighty Casey struck out, the Mighty Mark spun the heavily back-spun gas-filled celluloid ball into the net one too many times. I hadn’t played my best match, but this kid hadn’t played any all summer.  He was simply a better player.

While only a vague and distant memory now (his name was John, by the way), one lesson stands clear.  No matter how good I think I might be at something, there’s somebody better.  And I probably don’t have to look very far to find him.

(But I am pretty sure I was better-looking than he was).