Beer pong is an ubiquitous activity among college and high school students. Why? Because it's simple, it's fun, and it brings out a competitive edge in even shyest people.
The "sport" is easy. Throw a ping pong ball across a table into the other team's red pyramid of ten plastic Solo cups (and they have to be Solo cups or it's not the same), each filled with about an inch of beer. If your ball goes into one of their cups, they must drink that cup and remove it from the pyramid. Then they shoot at one of your cups. Whoever makes the other team drink all of their cups first wins.
The rules vary from town to town, college to college, but the basics are always the same.
This weekend I had a bunch of my friends over, and my mom took this as an excuse to invite an equally large bunch of her friends, many of whom wear pants with whales on them.
Of course, I set up beer pong so my friends and I could play. My mother and her friends saw us getting rowdy and wrote the game off as just another way for our "uninspired" generation to get wasted, because you know, that's all we ever do.
And then the adults became intrigued. They wanted to play beer pong with us.
We welcomed them to the table with open arms. My mom and her friend were the first team up, against two of my girlfriends.
It was glorious to watch. My mom and her friend, with their pearl earrings and pastel cable-knit sweaters tied around their shoulders, had their gamefaces on.
When they made their first shot it was like they won the Powerball. There was screaming, jumping, high-fives...it was great.
We received a message on the answering machine the next day from my mom's friend saying she wants to start a tournament and practice sessions so they could "beat the college kids".
There's a new article and video on the Time Magazine website all about the growing popularity and seriousness of beer pong. If Time's writing about it, it must have some sort of cultural importance, right? I think that deserves a cheers for our generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment