I had a surprisingly lovely Thanksgiving holiday. Yes, surprising. Before the holiday I was feeling anxious. I had no particular reason to feel anxious, just a lifetime of observation that when you bring lots of genetically-related kin together, something invariably goes wrong. Oddly, my evolutionary biology classes always suggested a different dynamic among those who share DNA by common descent. But humans are not vespid wasps or Belding’s ground squirrels; our lives are much messier and much less predictable.
Initially, it seemed like our family’s holiday gathering was destined for disaster. All four of my kids would be descending on my sister’s home, the location of our traditional Thanksgiving festivities, and their travel plans ranged from a two-hour bus ride to a two-flight journey. With four kids traveling over a holiday weekend it is not unusual to have one mishap, but as it turns out, none of my kids reached my sister’s home by their expected arrival times. It was our family’s version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. One of my kids was derailed by an act of nature, or God if you wish (your choice, but as inscrutable as God is, I suspect there are bigger things on his plate); two were thwarted by human irresponsibility, or possibly ineptitude; and a tiny but vocal canine was to blame for the delay of my remaining child.
The act of nature is easiest to explain. The weather across the Northeast on the Tuesday evening of Thanksgiving week was nasty; torrential downpours made driving conditions hazardous. And none of my children are confident drivers: the average age at which my three oldest kids secured their licenses was 23, and at 21, Eliel still does not know how to drive. I’ve begged him to take the wheel while I rest my eyes on countless occasions, but he is more responsible than I am and has always refused. Due to the weather, one of my kids delayed his four-hour drive until the storm had passed on the following day. His siblings weren’t expected until Wednesday anyway, so there was no rush. Sort of. At my sister’s house sleeping options for the kids are on a first-come-first-served basis, and as the tallest amongst his siblings by nearly half a foot, I knew he was anxious to secure the optimal divan to sleep off the inevitable overeating at our Thanksgiving feast.
But Wednesday brought a host of problems for those shorter siblings, so he would get his bed choice after all. One of my kids, living in New York City, took the subway down to Port Authority to catch a bus. Once on the bus, however, this child’s dog, which comfortably fits into a small purse, decided to speak up and voice his opinion about his travel conditions. Actually, no one was able to accurately translate his opinion (the great limitation of dogs, I find), but whatever he was trying to communicate, it was being expressed loudly, clearly, and incessantly. The bus driver, initially patient, ultimately kicked this yipping gerbil-sized dog and its human companion off the bus. At first I was horrified upon hearing this news. But within five minutes of listening to Velvel (Yiddish for wolf; yes, ironically named), when barking pet and owner finally arrived at my sister’s house, my sympathies were with the bus driver and other passengers. Before that, however, yipper and my child had to get back on the subway and back uptown to figure out Plan B (not that Plan B). As it turns out, my son who was delayed by the weather would now be driving on Wednesday and he agreed to swing by NYC to pick up Velvel, with owner attached. They arrived at my sister’s on Wednesday afternoon, which should have marked the last arrival of my kids, but in fact it was the first.
Now we can turn to human irresponsibility. In fairness to the rest of humanity, I should start with genetically-related irresponsibility: my ping pong-playing son. Didn’t I just describe Eliel as being more responsible than I am? Well, yes, on occasion. Let’s just say he has his moments. Eliel intentionally bought a ticket for an early morning flight to avoid travel problems on the busiest travel day of the year. Good idea, so I thought. Eliel, though, apparently decided that mornings are better for sleeping than flying and he managed to wake up after his flight had already departed. This set in motion a daylong scramble to reschedule his flight. He was eventually successful, although he wouldn’t be landing until midnight. I’m an incurable insomniac—I usually head to bed between 2:00-3:00 a.m.—so it wouldn’t be a problem picking him up at the airport. Unfortunately, that midnight arrival was wishful thinking. His initial flight departed late, and despite an hour-and-a-half layover, he nonetheless missed his connecting flight. And since his connecting airport was actually in the opposite direction of his final destination, after about 15 hours of travel he was now further away from my sister’s home than when he was comfortably oversleeping in his bed earlier that morning, presumably dreaming about tofurkey. The next available flight was the following day. Instead of arriving at 12:00 a.m., he would be arriving at 12:00 p.m., on Thanksgiving Day.
And what about my remaining child? As he was about to board his bus for a six-hour cross-state journey, he learned that the bus had inexplicably canceled its stop at his final destination, without alerting the affected passengers. Ultimately, the best he could do was to take another bus later in the day that would get him an hour-and-a-half away from my sister’s home. My father and I drove out to pick him up at this bus station, and we made it back before second-dinner, as hobbits say.
Before going further, I should note that I had initially written about my children’s travel woes in one long paragraph, rather than breaking up my account into the previous five paragraphs which you have just read. I’ve received some nice comments about these blogs (thank you), but as you might recall from an earlier blog, critiques, not compliments, are what get stubbornly lodged in my brain. I have received one critique: on occasion, or so I’ve been told, my paragraphs run too long. I had wanted to rebuff my critic with one brutally long paragraph (because I am absurdly petty), but although I was enjoying such spitefulness, I realized I would be enjoying this jest alone; readers would find it intolerable.
My kids did all finally arrive and it was a joy to see them and lose to them at cards, repeatedly, as I always do. But my kids, as wonderful as they are, were not what made Thanksgiving so special. It was actually my first family: parents and sister. To explain that, I need to back up a bit (I never promised my blog would be linear) and let you in on a secret: The Ping Pong Player and the Professor has been published.
The book was seven years in the making. Or was it eight? Or maybe more accurately, 21 (Eliel’s current age) or 55 (the winters I’ve survived, as the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons appropriately reckon a life)? Now that The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is out, I clearly need to get my story straight about how and why and when it was written. I have surely had ample opportunity to formulate, fashion, and fine-tune my narrative about the development of the book. After all, I’m its author and in whatever way I calculate my time investment, the relevant unit of measurement is years. But it’s an issue I hadn’t really thought about until recently, and even if I had, I’m a gifted procrastinator so I would not have considered the matter until it was pressing. And it was definitely not pressing: nobody had asked.
Actually, had anyone asked I would have been too stunned to respond. In the Preface of The Ping Pong Player and the Professor I describe how I consulted with one of my kids about my interest in writing a book, but when I ultimately sat down to write, it was a hermit’s affair and I didn’t discuss it with anyone until a draft of the book was completed. And even then, about two-and-half years ago, I shared it with very few people, and that number didn’t grow once I decided to publish it. My parents, for example, were completely unaware of the book until a few days ago, and I’m close with my parents. I had planned to surprise my father with a copy for his birthday, which always falls during the Thanksgiving holiday break, but while resetting the bookmarks on his phone he fortuitously discovered the book on my personal webpage. Okay, I know public webpages are not the most secure places to conceal secrets, but my website is not exactly a hub of internet traffic. Birthday surprises have gotten me into trouble lately anyway, so maybe this was for the best. Who, if not my parents, were those “very few people” with whom I shared the manuscript? The first critics I sought were those with the most practice: my children.
You probably noticed a strange comment in that last paragraph. Or maybe, if you are a regular reader of this blog page, you’ve come to expect strange comments. Either way, I should clarify what I mean by “once I decided to publish it.” It is a safe assumption that most authors who spend countless hours writing a book, ultimately, seek to publish their efforts. I too hoped to publish my ping pong pop musings, but I realized early on that the decision of whether or not to publish the book was not mine: it was Eliel’s. As I said to him when I handed him the several hundred-page draft: “We can do with it what you wish. If you want me to publish it, I can try to do so. If you would prefer to just keep it within the family, it can be an heirloom, something your grandkids can read to know what your childhood was like. It is up to you.” I honestly didn’t know which option he would prefer. If the roles were reversed I would have certainly chosen the heirloom option, but Eliel and I are different. Thankfully. Having kids who are dissimilar to you is what makes parenting so interesting, and rewarding. After reading the book Eliel strongly encouraged me to publish it. His reasoning was clear and Vulcanesque, as it always is: “Nobody understands table tennis. Publishing this book might help.” For his sake, I hope it does.
Integrity demands mentioning that these were not exactly his first comments upon completing the manuscript draft. Eliel’s initial observation was: “I was surprised at how accurate everything was.” Thanks Eliel. I appreciate backhanded compliments. Admittedly, his remark was not unjustified. Eliel is evidently aware of the inherent parental inclination to embellish stories of their children, or maybe he just knows my own tendencies. Regardless, I was pleased that he judged the book to be accurate, despite the surprise that such accuracy elicited.
On the day The Ping Pong Player and Professor was released (not to me, however—it would be another three weeks until I finally received a copy) I was scheduled to deliver a university lecture on demons. Not my own, but rather demons of the Babylonian variety. Actually, the talk was not so much about these clairvoyant, winged, rooster-footed, invisible beings who like to attend lectures on Torah and sit next to scholars (Berachot 6a; Chagigah 16a). More precisely, the lecture was about trying to explain their demise. At one time, according to the Talmud, demons outnumbered us. Considerably. So, although for over a thousand years many rabbis have insisted that demons do not exist, as any rabbi will tell you, who listens to rabbis? Indeed, not all of the demons have receded from Jewish imaginations, just nearly all of them. In any event, my lecture was in the evening so I had free time in the afternoon and my hosts suggested that faculty and students would be interested in discussing one of my recent publications. The Ping Pong Player and Professor was on my mind so I suggested reading two chapters of the book, which we could then discuss. It was at this event that I realized I needed a clear narrative about the development of the book. In other words, the matter became pressing.
I’ve always been fascinated by how books, at least those I enjoy, are written. I’ve spent much time reading histories, autobiographies, letters, and even early drafts that reveal the creative processes of my favorite authors (thank you Christopher Tolkien). But I have never understood why authors, when explaining the developmental processes and motivations behind their work, often contradict themselves. My mother is an inexhaustible storyteller and I’ve been listening to her stories my entire life, yet I can barely recall any inconsistencies in her tellings, and retellings. So when authors misremember dates or provide mutually exclusive accounts of events it has always puzzled me. But I am puzzled no longer! Actually, the real puzzle is how my mother has been able to keep all of her stories consistent over the years. There were so many events that led to the writing of The Ping Pong Player and the Professor that it is difficult for me to assess my motivational mood at any particular point in time. And speaking of time, the pandemic was a complete blur, more akin to a time warp than the steady rhythm of my life over the previous five decades. Who knows if the order of events in my head matches what unfolded in reality?
The motivational impulses in my head, however, are clear, even if the timings of their manifestations are fuzzy. My initial impulse wasn’t to write a book at all, but rather to try my hand at something new. I was driving home with Eliel late one evening from a tournament in New York and during the drive, while Eliel slept, I kept replaying his final match of the tournament in my head. I thought the match was thrilling and I wondered whether I could capture the excitement of the match on paper, I guess a dated expression, although on occasion I still do write the old-fashioned way. We arrived home around 1:00 a.m. and after unpacking the car and getting Eliel into bed, I began to write. And write. By the time I left my desk, the sun had already been up for hours. I thought I had engagingly captured the experience of the match, but I’m never a good judge of my writing, so I sent the eight-page description to a colleague whose critical eye I deeply respect. Her reaction was enthusiastic and a shortened version of what I sent my colleague that day, otherwise almost unchanged, serves as the Prologue in The Ping Player and the Professor. Thus my writing began, not with a book in mind, but simply to see if I could capture snapshots, in writing, of life in the table tennis world.
And it was fun. Even liberating. After tournaments, training camps, club visits, and so forth, I couldn’t wait to return to my computer to see if I could accurately and compellingly portray the experience. I was motivated by the challenge, but also the recognition that I had something to share. Indeed, at some point I became aware that I was part of three worlds that most Americans were completely unfamiliar with: table tennis, anthropology, and observant Judaism. An internal desire surfaced to share these hidden worlds with others, hoping that becoming familiar with previously unknown worlds could help people see past the barriers that have been painfully dividing all of us in recent years. It was out of these haphazard writings that The Ping Pong Player and the Professor emerged.
So, back to explaining my unanticipated holiday cheer. As I mentioned, my father had discovered the book before I could surprise him. He ordered nearly a dozen copies and distributed them among friends. He did this, I believe, before he had even read the book himself, which was riskier than I think he realized. After all, he is mentioned in the book several times and right before the book went to press I got nervous about how my parents, who are even more private than I am, would react to a revealing memoir about our family. To alleviate my concerns, I told my sister (who had also been in the dark) about The Ping Pong Player and the Professor and asked her to read it, with an eye toward alerting me about anything that might trouble our parents. She read it, and mostly approved, so I was somewhat reassured. Regardless, my father’s reaction after reading the book is what sons dream of. He loved it unreservedly, and literally spent hours telling me the myriad reasons he felt this way. Indeed, even if I don’t sell another copy, this praise will have made all of the work that went into writing The Ping Pong Player and the Professor worthwhile.
My mother hasn’t finished the book yet, but I think she is enjoying it. Hopefully. She has a memory that puts the rest of us (i.e., our extended family) to shame, but the book has apparently revealed the selectivity of that prodigious memory, as certain events discussed in the book seem to have been conveniently forgotten. It is actually a very healthy way to live, which may account for her energy and youthful appearance. On more than one occasion when we’ve gone out together she has been presumed to be my date. And my sister loves when strangers mistake them for sisters. I assume it goes without saying, despite the dismay of her children, such events invariably make my mother’s day. As I said, genetic relatedness is hardly a promising recipe for avoiding distress and drama.
My sister, the last member of my first family, also made it a memorable Thanksgiving. I had arrived a few days before my kids, and at one meal I mentioned to my sister that The Ping Pong Player and the Professor had not received any reviews on Amazon. I knew the official release date had been misleading as the book was clearly not available then. As I mentioned above, I didn’t receive a copy until three weeks after the release date and as of this writing none of the endorsers of the book have received their complimentary copy. Still, it was a little disappointing that nobody had bought and read the book and felt compelled to tell the world about it. Later in the week I checked back on Amazon and to my delight a review had been posted, and it was a five-star review! Yay, someone liked the book! But then I scrolled down to read the review and I saw that it was written by my sister. My heart sank. My first thought was, “What will people think? Our last name is too rare for it to be a coincidence. Evidently, the book could only secure a review from a biased family member. Nepotism at its worst. I wonder what that scoundrel professor paid her?” And thus my thoughts went. But then I read the review, and it was so sweet, so generous. I quickly realized I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I’m honored that my sister was the first reviewer of the book. Indeed, The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is about family. If the book is enjoyed by only a few people on the planet, I’m glad those people are the members of my family.
While we are discussing Amazon, can we be clear that table tennis and pickleball are different sports? I probably need to unpack that question, even though it’s rhetorical. Pickleball, as far as I can tell, appears to be the greatest threat to the growth of table tennis in this country. In ethnographic interviews I conducted last year on the lives of active table tennis players, more than one interviewee commented that they didn’t know whether they’d be playing table tennis in a year; they were considering, with the rest of the country, adopting pickleball as their physical activity of choice. It is simply an easier sport to master, without all the confounding spins of table tennis. Some table tennis clubs have in fact seen the writing on the wall and replaced many of their table tennis tables with indoor pickleball courts. What does this have to do with Amazon? Fair question. Amazon has a ranking for everything, including a ranking for table tennis books. I first noticed it because The Ping Pong Player and the Professor was listed in the top 10 table tennis books and was even listed as #1 for a while. This made me laugh: I assumed I had sold two books while every other table tennis book on the list had sold only one. But at one point, out of curiosity, I actually clicked on the list and I was surprised to find that The Ping Pong Player and the Professor was the only table tennis book anywhere near the top of the list—all the other books were pickleball books. Please, Amazon, table tennis can’t compete with pickleball; we don’t surrender, but we do acknowledge their supremacy in a popularity battle of racquet sports. And while we are at it, table tennis can’t compete with alluring and suggestive images either. One time I clicked on the list of top-selling table tennis books and The Ping Pong Player and the Professor was listed at #8. The top seven books, however, were adorned with covers of scantily clad Japanese women. I can’t read Japanese, so for all I know they may have been table tennis players, although if so, they must be obscure players as I didn’t recognize any of them. Maybe they are pickleball stars?
Since this blog is about family, I want to pick up a thread I mentioned early: consulting my children for advice. I should note that I am pursuing this thread, ironically and probably foolishly, against the counsel of one of my children who read over this blog before I posted it. This sage, however, wants to become a rabbi, so I’m doing my part to help this child acclimate to the career that awaits; as I said, who listens to rabbis?
I have often been teased for relying on my kids for guidance through life’s intricacies, sometimes by my kids themselves. But a recent anecdote I stumbled across by Stephen Jay Gould reassured me that my trust in the wisdom of our youth is not misguided. I have been slowly working my way through Gould’s massive tome on evolution, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, preparing for a graduate course I’ll be teaching next semester. I don’t normally read Gould. Although a formidable scholar, much of what he wrote was pop science, a genre I read on occasion, but not habitually (The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, incidentally, is fairly technical and not intended for a lay audience). Moreover, Gould was quite hostile toward the adaptationist approach that was the foundation of my training in evolutionary biology. But I have been appreciating the depth of his analysis in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, so the next time I was browsing the aisles of a bookstore (a not infrequent endeavor), I found myself searching for more of his writings. To my delight I discovered a posthumously published collection of Gould’s essays on baseball. I had loved Doris Kearns Goodwin’s baseball autobiography, Wait Until Next Year. Like Gould, a Harvard faculty and former New Yorker, Goodwin became a Red Sox fan after years of childhood devotion to the Brooklyn Dodgers (after a lifetime of rooting for the Yankees, Gould’s Red Sox conversion was even more unlikely). In her autobiography, Goodwin poignantly relates how as a child she followed the Dodgers’ games on radio broadcasts, meticulously filling out her scorecard in pencil, a lost art in today’s world. When her father came home from work, she would sit on his lap and recount the games using her detailed scorecard. If I remember correctly, she credits her storytelling talents to these father-daughter moments. My own attraction to baseball is also related to storytelling. Like Goodwin, I’m a radio listener, soaking up the tales of Yankee’s broadcaster John Sterling, as he, a Luddite poster child, fills out his paper scorecard.
Gould’s book, Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville, is also part autobiography, although the book is a collection of writings rather than a cover-to-cover narrative. In one chapter, Gould describes his childhood stickball games growing up in Queens and he relates how an opponent once hit a shallow fly ball. Appropriately, or so he thought, he called the “infield fly rule.” This rule, if you are unfamiliar with baseball, was instituted by Major League Baseball to prevent infielders, when there is a runner on base, from intentionally dropping an infield fly and then throwing the runner out. Incidentally, I once tried to explain the rules of baseball to an Iranian table tennis friend; trust me, if you didn’t grow up around baseball, learning the rules as an adult is nearly hopeless. Gould’s playmates were familiar with baseball, of course, but they had never heard of the infield fly rule and debate ensued. They agreed that they would rely on the opinion of the next passing adult. To Gould’s good fortune, “The gent turned out to be a knowledgeable fan who not only affirmed the existence of such a rule but even gave a well-wrought explanation for its necessity.”
But fortune was not always on Gould’s side. As he relates:
“…one summer at camp I got into an argument with a bunkmate about whether humans and dinosaurs had coexisted: me, already a budding paleontologist, in the correct negative; he, citing Alley Oop, in the wrongly positive. We bet a candy bar and agreed to abide by parental opinion at the forthcoming weekend visitation. My parents were unable to come. His father affirmed that, of course, humans and dinosaurs had co-existed—just look at Alley Oop—and I had to pay, Hershey’s chocolate with almonds.”
If you imagine this type of misconception as a product of an earlier, less-educated time in US history, think again. Many years after Gould’s childhood I had a similar debate with a friend, an Ivy League graduate no less. But maybe I shouldn’t be critical. If Sherlock Holmes was unaware of Copernican theory, he was also unlikely to know when humans and dinosaurs respectively roamed the planet, and who can argue with Holmes’ intellect? And it is fair to say that the limits of my knowledge are boundless and growing at an alarming rate. To be clear, I’m referring to my mental decline rather than the exponential growth of knowledge on this planet. And it is surely true that comics and cartoons can easily misguide: it wasn’t until adulthood, as a cat owner, I appreciated that Jerry could never have outrun Tom. Not even once.
A few last thoughts on my newly released book before I wrap up this blog post. Ever since the book has been published I have had an unrelenting urge to update readers on things that have happened since the book was written. But I’m resisting that urge, at least for the moment. Updating people on a book that hasn’t been read yet seems premature. That said, the photo on the book’s back cover deserves a comment, as it has elicited a good-natured sarcastic remark from, well, who else? Eliel. The photo is more than a decade old, so indeed, I’m sporting a younger man’s clothes, as they say. My attire, however, is hardly the issue. My beard is not exactly brown anymore; generously, let’s describe it as “snowy.” And my hairline, also unlike the back-cover picture, seems to have receded right off the top of my head.
Responding to Eliel’s jibe, I commented that I should have published before and after pictures, the way the media always does for US presidents toward the end of their second term. These pictures invariably show the physical toll of serving as the leader of our country: the relatively young, energetic picture before they entered office (think Clinton, Obama, George W.), contrasted, side-by-side with the prematurely greyed, baggy-eyed, aged image upon leaving office. My comparative pictures would be the youthful, vibrant me before I began coaching Eliel, and the grizzled daddy-coach who watched years of his life vanish before his eyes with each unnecessarily close match I had to witness. Thanks again Eliel. As you know, I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything in the world, although a few less life-shortening matches would have been appreciated.
I think I will close with a comment by a friend, who had asked via email about the launch of the book. I replied that there was no “launch” whatsoever. Indeed, the release seems to have been delayed and publishing with a small, nonprofit press meant there would be no fanfare. But I did mention my father’s enthusiasm for the book. She responded,
“It may take a while for people to discover it, but your book is entertaining, educational, and endearing. Given the state of our nation those are important and powerful attributes. Your father’s reaction is perhaps the greatest measure of success, and the fact that he discovered it without a launch party and marketing fanfare suggests the considerable power of your pen.”
I have good friends, and good family too. In the end, although I didn’t fully appreciate it during the process, I think they are the real reasons I wrote the book. I hope you enjoy it as much as they have.
Richard Sosis 