Chris: Welcome back to the Brawl, where ordinary people do subordinary things and call it winning… and you laugh. This week’s game: ping pong. Now, I pride myself on being pretty good at ping pong. Not like Olympics good, like endless sweat and tear-laced battles with my brother in the basement good.

Glenn: I’ve seen “Forrest Gump.”

Thats about as far as ping pong and I go.

Chris: I came in figuring that I would win, but I thought, on a scale between soccer and golf, Glenn might be able to compete with me for at least a little bit. But I forgot one thing: ping pong requires one skill, and it is the one that Glenn lacks most of all. Coordination.

Glenn: I did pretty good at raquetball so I figured I would do alright at this. Same concept right? From the very start I found something very strange happening.

I was too strong for this game. Every single time I would hit the ball it would fly off the table and into the walls, windows and people of the rec center.

Chris: By “every single time” Glenn hit the ball he means the one or two times he hit the ball when he wasn’t serving. This was a massacre. From the time we started warming up, I knew it was going to be ugly. But here’s the part that’s even uglier. I didn’t take it easy on Glenn. Then again, did he take it easy on me in 007? I don’t think so. Let the bloodbath begin.

Glenn: I have done this horribly since we played golf. I spent more time getting the ball than I did playing the game. Shot after shot the ball just whizzed past me or bounced off me. It was shameful.

Chris: We started off with the traditional method of deciding who should serve first, tossing the ball at each other’s paddles which were hanging off the edge of the table. This is similar to “beer pong,” though I am not even sure how I know that considering that I am underage and have never participated in such activity. So, yeah, anyway, I served first and jumped out to a 4-1 lead with Glenn getting a point that surprised even him.

Glenn: The frustration that I could hear in Chris’s voice was wonderful every time that he had to admit that I had somehow gotten a point. It surprised me more than him actually. But the worst part was how that one point made me feel. Despair can’t be experienced without hope and my hope was disappearing fast.

Chris: The points started to add up. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11… and then, out of sheer boredom perhaps more than anything, I saw an opportunity to use my backhand smash and boy did I take it. I had returned Glenn’s serve and he had popped it up back to me, the ball landing in that perfect spot to just smack it back in your opponent’s face. SMACK. I made perfect contact with the ball and it slammed off the table and past Glenn before he even knew it was coming. The glare from Elizabeth, our photographer, told me all I needed to know. That was probably too far.

Glenn: I was already broken at this point. This was just overkill. My willpower was gone. I just stood at the end of the table and let the ball bounce past me.

Chris: I suppose I should say that I was in the zone, that the paddle felt right in my hand and the ball just wouldn’t go anywhere but the table… but in truth, my weak performance would have never held up against my brother, who is a freshman in high school. I was simply playing a conservative game and making my opponent return my shots. Since my opponent was Glenn, he wasn’t returning many of them.

Glenn: This was easily one of the shorter brawls. It only lasted around 10 minutes. Even that was way too long. Before we played we had to wait for the people in front of us to finish their game. I offered to play billiards against Chris and he declined. I feel like that is a much more interesting story than the standard “Chris is better than Glenn at sports” narrative.

Chris: Crap. Now I have to play Glenn at billiards. Who even calls it billiards anyway? It’s pool. I think Glenn has been watching too many British sitcoms. But I suppose I can’t let a challenge like that go unnoticed.

Glenn: Playing golf and racquetball made me want to legitimately try those sports sometime outside of the brawl. I couldn’t care less about ping pong. If I never picked up those paddles for the rest of my life that would be fine with me.

Chris: Wait. Did you just say you would try golf again? Last time I checked, golf made you ten times as depressed as ping pong and caused you way more physical pain and anguish. In fact, you almost got as upset at one leisurely round of golf as I did when I had a bad round in high school. And those were ugly, emotional times for both of us. You can’t possibly mean that, can you?

Glenn: At least when we played golf we got to cruise around in those cool carts…

Chris: We were outside, Glenn!

Glenn: I treat every sport as a practice for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. Hitting things with golf clubs is good practice for smashing the brains of the undead. Lightly tapping a ping pong ball back and forth is not.

Chris: Either way, you’re not hitting much. Bazinga!

Glenn: There’s no honor or challenge in beating me at sports anymore Chris. Much the same way there is no honor or challenge in beating any team from Cleveland.

Chris: No argument there. Think of the NFL Draft as a shoe store. Most teams walk in thinking they need the hottest new thing. You (and Cleveland) chose shoestrings as the object that would turn your luck around. Honestly, new shoestrings. (Ok, that was a stretch. What I’m trying to say is that Glenn had new shoestrings this week and actually pointed them out as being a possible game-changer.)

Glenn: Next week returns to my dominion when Chris faces off against me at “Forza Motorsport 4,” a game where his “injured” thumb won’t have to do too much work.

Chris: Hey, did I tell you about my new driving gloves? There’s hope in Cleveland!