I Spent My Fortune on Ping Pong

My boyfriend celebrated his 35th birthday this weekend. 35. My god.

I wanted to do something special for him but not super special in that he would be mercilessly teased by his friends. Don’t get me wrong, I am normally all about setting him up to be the brunt of his buddies’ jokes (it’s fun for me) but I consider this uncharacteristic display of kindness as part of my gift to him. So no huge party with balloons and streamers and pin the tail on the donkey and a Cinderella birthday cake. I’ll save that for next year.

This year I decided to hold his birthday gathering at a posh (yes, posh) ping-pong club downtown. I didn’t even know such a thing existed until I was walking down King street about a month ago and happened to see a sign that said SPIN on it and pointed towards a dark alley. Naturally, I was curious. I peered into the alley to see a spinning sign. PING and then PONG kept twirling around and around. Beyond intrigued at this point, I took out my cell to Google it. So that is how it came to be that my boyfriend’s birthday took place at a ping pong palace in downtown Toronto.

Seemingly off topic, I grew up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. In this town the locals spend most of their time hunting, fishing and making fun of city folk. Boy do they think us city people are morons! Especially when it comes to the shit on which we spend our money. Let me say, although I moved to Toronto years ago, I never truly felt like a stupid city person until I booked this ping pong party. See, I saw the pricing on the website, and although I found $30 per hour to be pretty damn steep for playing a game that is usually free if you drive to a bar on the outskirts of ANY city, I decided to go for it. How often will my boyfriend get this old, really? When I booked, however, I found that $30 is the walk-in rate. The advance booking rate is $60!!! Sixty fucking dollars to play ping pong? Holy shit. I initially gave up this zany idea but quickly jumped back on board when I found every upscale pool hall and over 25 club was closed to reservations, thanks to this damn holiday season. Unless I wanted to look outside of Toronto, I was screwed. So, ruing my creative party planning genius, I called back and booked. Only, I had to book for just three hours instead of four because in that thirty minutes I spent making up my mind, the place had sold out on all of their tables except one in this narrow time slot. Gawh! How many city folk have the inclination and the money to spend on a stupid game!?! (Hint: the answer is a lot).

So, I dressed up but not really. I wore cute little black dress, sparkly tights and tall high heeled boots. I made sure my hair looked super sexy, of course. The BF wore a dress shirt, dress jeans and dress shoes. You know, usual downtown wear for a semi-casual night out. When we got to the club, however, we were amused to find some people dressed to thuh nines. I’m talking super slutty evening wear, stilettos, professional hair and make up. One guy even wore a tuxedo. Of course my first thought was, “holy shit this is awesome!” Our friends showed up dressed more or less like us, and we commenced with the beer swigging, ball slapping fun. We all sucked at ping pong but what we lacked in skill we made up for in jokes about balls flying at our face and such.

The reactions to the food was mixed – some of us liked our orders more than others but at least the menu could accommodate the vegetarians and the kosher person in the group. Despite this, everyone really did have a blast at Spin. I did not see a bored or unhappy face the entire night. The funnest part for me was that you did not have to pick any of the balls off the ground. These cute guys with nets just came around every five minutes or so, scooped them up and dropped them in your basket. Also, no one complained if you hit them with a ping pong ball, even if you did it on purpose. Balls were literally flying everywhere so it would be unusual to not get one in the face, boob or groin area at some point.

When I got the bill at the end of the night, I was thankfully a little tipsy. My slightly inebriated state took the edge off the ungodly amount I just spent in one single evening. I signed the receipt, stuffed it into my clutch before the boyfriend could see it, and refused to take it out and look at it the next morning when I was sober. It still sits in my silver and black clutch right now. It is eating at my conscience, actually, like a beating heart under the floor boards. My only solace at this point is that my boyfriend and a bunch of his friends said it was the BEST birthday party they had ever been to. That should provide some mollification, right? Right?

Here is the link to Spin Toronto, in case you want to spend gobs of money on a ridiculously fun night.