A news story I read today says a Texas lawmaker claims ping-pong is deadlier than guns. Um, if that’s true, I think they’re doing it wrong. Are they playing ping-pong with live grenades down in the Lone Star State?
Now, admittedly I have never shot anyone with a gun, and as such, I have never killed anyone that way either. But I have also never killed anyone playing ping-pong. (The truth is, I have never killed anyone at all, and I’m happy to keep it like that.) And yet, somehow I still believe guns to be deadlier than ping-pong, at least potentially.
You see, I have seen hunters killing animals with guns, but never with ping-pong. (Although maybe one of those Chinese table tennis Olympians could kill an animal with ping-pong. But I doubt it. Maybe with the paddle, but certainly not with the ball. Unless they choked them with it by force-feeding it to them?) So I still think guns are deadlier. I believe more Americans may even die each year in hunting accidents than in ping-pong accidents, but I have no real statistical data to back that claim up (although I do not ever recall hearing the phrase uttered on the news: “Sadly they were killed in a tragic ping-pong accident.”). But maybe that Texas lawmaker is a really bad shot, but while he’s holding a gun, nobody has the nerve to tell him that, just in case he gets off one lucky shot, so maybe this is why he thinks guns are not deadly. And maybe he’s also so bad at ping-pong, people say stuff like: “Man, you’re killing me here!” That might explain this whole thing.
But aren’t there toy guns that shoot ping-pong balls? Maybe that’s what he means? Oh, but wait: that’s still a gun, so obviously it’s safer than regular ping-pong.
But this gives me an idea for a new horror movie: Ping-Pong! A masked killer (wearing a competitive table tennis outfit) stalks unsuspecting horny teenagers (and a stoner) and kills them all with ping-pong paddles, leaving a ping-pong ball in every victim’s mouth. And the back story is that as a child, his ping-pong instructor was having an affair with his mother, and his father came home, caught them, and beat them both to death with a ping-pong paddle, after which the kid was committed to a psychiatric ward, waiting for his chance to strike! (This movie will be especially terrifying in Texas, where ping-pong related deaths are among the highest in the nation! In fact, screw the previous title, how about: The Texas Ping-Pong Massacre? {Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but about the even more dangerous and horrifying ping-pong.} In this movie, a few hapless teenagers get lost in backwoods Texas and stumble upon a gymnasium used by the inbred locals for ping-pong, and when they enter the building, they get pummeled with ping-pong balls until they slowly die, one by one! {It takes a long time to die that way, but it couldn’t be more horrifying!})
Here is this silly sports-related story:
