Pong Table Quotes

The meeting was like a war council with donuts. Then again, back at Camp Half-Blood they used to have their most serious discussions around the Ping-Pong table in the rec room with crackers and Cheez Whiz, so Percy felt right at home.

You cannot expect an app dreamed up in a dorm room, or among the Ping-Pong tables of a Silicon Valley incubator, to successfully replace the types of rich interactions to which we’ve painstakingly adapted over millennia. Our sociality is simply too complex to be outsourced to a social network or reduced to instant messages and emojis.

The only way I’ll play beer pong is if the room was a sterile room, the table was stainless steel sprayed down with disinfectant, the ball brand new, and everybody playing wore gloves and hairnets underneath their space suits.

Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all laughed.

A more down-to-earth project run by the Soviets had determined that eight square meters of algae—an expanse of pond scum about the size of two ping-pong tables—was needed to keep a single human supplied with oxygen.

At some offices, play is becoming increasingly recognized as an important component of success. And I’m not just talking about Ping-Pong tables in the break room. Employees who have engaged in play throughout their lives outside of work and

Why not relent, marry a reformed hooker, buy some old furniture and a ping-pong table, become a Cornhusker fan, open a dusty bottle of Kentucky straight, turn on the Rockies game, and enjoy the brief time you have left on this weird planet of sorrow?

THE COUNCIL WAS NOTHING LIKE Jason imagined. For one thing, it was in the Big House rec room, around a Ping-Pong table, and one of the satyrs was serving nachos and sodas. Somebody had brought Seymour the leopard head in from the living room and hung him on the wall. Every once in a while, a counselor would toss him a Snausage. Jason looked around the room and tried to remember everyone’s name. Thankfully, Leo and Piper were sitting next to him—it was their first meeting as senior counselors. Clarisse, leader of the Ares cabin, had her boots on the table, but nobody seemed to care. Clovis from Hypnos cabin was snoring in the corner while Butch from Iris cabin was seeing how many pencils he could fit in Clovis’s nostrils. Travis Stoll from Hermes was holding a lighter under a Ping-Pong ball to see if it would burn, and Will Solace from Apollo was absently wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist. The counselor from Hecate cabin, Lou Ellen something-or-other, was playing “got-your-nose” with Miranda Gardiner from Demeter, except that Lou Ellen really had magically disconnected Miranda’s nose, and Miranda was trying to get it back. Jason had hoped Thalia would show. She’d promised, after all—but she was nowhere to be seen. Chiron had told him not to worry about it. Thalia often got sidetracked fighting monsters or running quests for Artemis, and she would probably arrive soon. But still, Jason worried. Rachel Dare, the oracle, sat next to Chiron at the head of the table. She was wearing her Clarion Academy school uniform dress, which seemed a bit odd, but she smiled at Jason. Annabeth didn’t look so relaxed. She wore armor over her camp clothes, with her knife at her side and her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. As soon as Jason walked in, she fixed him with an expectant look, as if she were trying to extract information out of him by sheer willpower. “Let’s come to order,” Chiron said. “Lou Ellen, please give Miranda her nose back. Travis, if you’d kindly extinguish the flaming Ping-Pong ball, and Butch, I think twenty pencils is really too many for any human nostril. Thank you. Now, as you can see, Jason, Piper, and Leo have returned successfully…more or less. Some of you have heard parts of their story, but I will let them fill you in.” Everyone looked at Jason. He cleared his throat and began the story. Piper and Leo chimed in from time to time, filling in the details he forgot. It only took a few minutes, but it seemed like longer with everyone watching him. The silence was heavy, and for so many ADHD demigods to sit still listening for that long, Jason knew the story must have sounded pretty wild. He ended with Hera’s visit right before the meeting.

Mr. Editor, we are bound to be the slaves of those who have power to destroy us. I am not speaking of Strawforth any more. I knew him at school. We played ping-pong at the Reynolds Club. He had a white buttocky face with a few moles, and fat curling thumbs that put a cheating spin on the ball. Clickety-clack over the green table. I don’t believe his I.Q. was so terribly high, though maybe it was, but he worked hard at his math and chemistry. While I was fiddling in the fields.

I still remember the day I first came across the Internet. It was back in 1993, when I was in high school. I went with a couple of buddies to visit our friend Ido (who is now a computer scientist). We wanted to play table tennis. Ido was already a huge computer fan, and before opening the ping-pong table he insisted on showing us the latest wonder. He connected the phone cable to his computer and pressed some keys. For a minute all we could hear were squeaks, shrieks and buzzes, and then silence. It didn’t succeed. We mumbled and grumbled, but Ido tried again. And again. And again. At last he gave a whoop and announced that he had managed to connect his computer to the central computer at the nearby university. ‘And what’s there, on the central computer?’ we asked. ‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘there’s nothing there yet. But you could put all kinds of things there.’ ‘Like what?’ we questioned. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘all kinds of things.’ It didn’t sound very promising. We went to play ping-pong, and for the following weeks enjoyed a new pastime, making fun of Ido’s ridiculous idea. That was less than twenty-five years ago (at the time of writing).

He kept trading up. By the end of the night, when Rich came home, he didn’t have a dime or a mattress, a Ping-Pong table or an elk head, or the five other things he traded up. Richard drove home in a pickup truck. No lie. He started with a dime and ended up with a Dodge. I remember reading this quote from C. S. Lewis where he says, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The flipper bat was quite a breakthrough because it gave the player a true means of exercising and developing skill. You could aim at targets now, rather than in the old days when you popped the ball up and just shook the shit out of the table and hoped that it went in the right hole or hit the right thing. The use of the flipper bat is probably the greatest breakthrough ever in pinball. —Eddie

The lack of an absolute standard of rest meant that one could not determine whether two events that took place at different times occurred in the same position in space. For example, suppose our Ping-Pong ball on the train bounces straight up and down, hitting the table twice on the same spot one second apart. To someone on the track, the two bounces would seem to take place about thirteen meters apart, because the tram would have traveled that far down the track between the bounces.

Jim was shaken by the impending death of his grandfather—he had, after all, been partly named for him—but Jim would do as he always did in the face of grief: he would build and create. Foraging for any suitable materials, Jim settled on his mother’s old felt coat, and as he leaned over the table in the Hensons’ living room he sewed a simple puppet body, with a slightly pointed face, out of the faded turquoise material. For eyes, he simply glued two halves of a Ping-Pong ball—with slashed circles carefully inked in black on each—to the top of the head. That was it. From the simplest of materials—and, perhaps appropriately, from a determination to bring a bit of order from darkness—Kermit was born.

Fine,” I answered. “Now what about a drink?” I followed him up the corridor once more, across the entrance hall, and on through a swing door at the far end. I heard the light clack-clack of ping-pong balls, and braced myself for frivolity. The room we entered was empty. The sportsmen, whoever they were, were playing in the room beyond. Here there were easy chairs, a table or two, an electric fire and a bar in the far corner, behind which my youthful companion installed himself. I noticed, with misgiving, two enormous urns. “Coffee or cocoa?” he asked. “Or do you prefer something cool? I can recommend the orange juice with a splash of soda.” “I’d like a Scotch,” I said. He looked distressed. His expression became that of an anxious host whose guest demands fresh strawberries in midwinter.

Two days later, I started my job. My job involved typing friendly letters full of happy lies to dying children. I wasn't allowed to touch my computer keyboard. I had to press the keys with a pair of Q-tips held by tweezers -- one pair of tweezers in each hand. I’m sorry -- that was a metaphor. My job involved using one of those photo booths to take strips of four photographs of myself. The idea was to take one picture good enough to put on a driver’s license, and to be completely satisfied with it, knowing I had infinite retries and all the time in the world, and that I was getting paid for it. I’d take the photos and show them to the boss, and he would help me think of reasons the photos weren't good enough. I’d fill out detailed reports between retakes. We weren't permitted to recycle the outtakes, so I had to scan them, put them on eBay, arrange a sale, and then ship them out to the buyer via FedEx. FedEx came once every three days, at either ten minutes till noon or five minutes after six. I’m sorry -- that was a metaphor, too. My job involved blowing ping-pong balls across long, narrow tables using three-foot-long bendy straws. At the far end of the table was a little wastebasket. My job was to get the ping-pong ball into that wastebasket, using only the bendy straw and my lungs. Touching the straw to the ping-pong ball was grounds for a talking-to. If the ping-pong ball fell off the side of the table, or if it missed the wastebasket, I had to get on my computer and send a formal request to commit suicide to Buddha himself. I would then wait patiently for his reply, which was invariably typed while very stoned, and incredibly forgiving. Every Friday, an hour before Quitting Time, I'd put on a radiation suit. I'd lift the wastebaskets full of ping-pong balls, one at a time, and deposit them into drawstring garbage bags. I'd tie the bags up, stack them all on a pallet, take them down to the incinerator in the basement, and watch them all burn. Then I'd fill out, by hand, a one-page form re: how the flames made me feel. "Sad" was an acceptable response; "Very Sad" was not.

Competing in a 100-pushup challenge in the office This is another example of an activity that can be a way to facilitate group bonding but isn’t necessarily inclusive of people with different levels of physical ability. Especially in startups with a younger median age, team activities can tend to skew toward those enjoyed by a very specific subset of the population. Things like fantasy sports teams; foosball, ping-pong, or pool tables; and fitness challenges can give off a “tech bro” kind of vibe. This isn’t to say that they shouldn’t be allowed, and it might not be possible to find an activity that every single person will love, but it’s important to pay attention to the type and variety of activities and rituals and who they might be unintentionally favoring or excluding.

You cannot expect an app dreamed up in a dorm room, or among the Ping-Pong tables of a Silicon Valley incubator, to successfully replace the types of rich interactions to which we’ve painstakingly adapted over millennia.

•  Join a sports team (a structured activity, yes, but better than nothing!), or take a fun exercise class like pole dancing, trampoline, or trapeze.         •  Engage in games that are fun for you. It could be board or card games, crosswords, or darts. Perhaps you love putting together model airplanes or building with Legos. Consider buying a Ping-Pong or pool table . . . and be careful not to turn that table into another place for competition and über-focus.         •  Find a play partner. Animals and children are always ready to play and laugh. Find opportunities to play with your own children or pets or those of friends and family. Finding

Not again Megan Fox, that’s ten times already. I’ll die of exhaustion.” (If any under sixteens are reading this, I was tired out because we were playing table tennis. Yeah, boys and girls, just game after game of ping pong. Nothing naughty going on at all. Miss Fox was thoroughly bushwhacked, too.) Actually,

This neighborhood felt like a part of her. It felt as though some of her DNA was in the blue clapboards and off-white Cape Cods and cracked pavement and small patches of lawn, like she’d been beamed away à la Star Trek but a few of her particles got left behind. Part of her would always be at Thanksgiving at Uncle Tommy and Aunt Eileen’s, sitting at the “kids’ table,” which was a Ping-Pong table with a king-size sheet doubling as a tablecloth.

All the Ping-Pong and pool tables, on-site chefs, Nerf hoops, and stereo systems cannot make up for the truth that some places work people like dogs.

For five years I played ping-pong with Bella. I learned how to touch—not strike—the ball with a sponge racket, and how to return sidespin, and how to start my serve by tossing the ball at least six inches above the table from an open hand, as mandated by the International Table Tennis Federation. Bella was a straightforward person who gave straightforward advice: move your feet, spin the ball, don't be so lazy. She told me about playing table tennis in Ukraine.

Ping-pong is a game for obsessives. Obsessiveness, in fact, is a prerequisite for success. The best players in the world spend hours standing at a table, repeating the same strokes and the same footwork, developing the reflexes and the intuition necessary to defy physics by returning shots struck in their direction at impossible speeds and with unpredictable spin.

It’s the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games.

The company's job is to create a supportive environment. Extra vacation days and ping pong tables can create temporary happiness, but being supportive also means challenging you, pushing you to improve yourself as a person, to better build enduring happiness. In that way, actually, the company should be like a parent.

If that sounds cultish, I’m unapologetic. When organizations talk about creating an innovative business culture, a lot of people focus on the external symbols. The ping-pong and foosball tables in the office, the team-building Thursday beers after work, the company ski weekends, and the anything-goes dress code. At TMHQ we have all those things. But they are marginal to what we are really about. A culture is built up over months and years of good practice, questioning, and improvement. Of doing things the right way and having anyone who comes into the group or participates in an event recognize what that means. Culture is all the things that happen in an organization when the boss isn’t looking. Tony Hsieh describes, in his book Delivering Happiness, how he built his online shoe business Zappos by concentrating on service and integrity above all else. “Your personal core values define who you are,” he argued, “and a company’s core values ultimately define the company’s character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.” I think that’s true, and doubly so when you are “delivering happiness” as an experience that asks people to take on and display some of the virtues of that culture themselves. In this sense, we believed, in our initial phase of recruiting, that a candidate’s previous career path and qualifications were less important than his or her willingness to embrace our credo. Though we had no experience in event management, the plan was never to go out and hire people from the event industry. We had obstacles where participants jump through flames and we feared the first thing an outside event person might instinctively do was pull out a fire extinguisher.

Oh, I see how it is.” Matt reached both his arms into the air. “Hang on, let me just do a few stretches.” Then he rolled his head from front to back. “Loosen up a bit.” His little spectacle made me laugh, a genuine These are my friends; why not enjoy myself? kind of laugh, and my body finally relaxed. “Hey, laugh all you want, but just remember half of my team is completely sober. We have a fifty-percent advantage.” He slung his arm around Taylor. “Or disadvantage—have you never seen me play beer pong? I kind of suck,” she admitted. “Shh, babe, this is the mental game. We’re just psyching them out. I know you can’t play for shit.” I lifted my hair into a ponytail and pulled a hair tie from my wrist. “You do realize we can hear you, right?” “You do realize I can hear you too?” Taylor added. “I mean, way to boost my confidence right before the big game,” she teased. “I know, babe, and I’m sorry, but look—it’s working. Isla’s getting ready for a throwdown. She’s pulling her hair up and she’s all ‘Hold my purse.’ ” “Purse?” Taylor mouthed. I shrugged and forced back another smile. Game face, right? Landon chuckled. “Okay, okay, let’s go. Someone needs to get their ass kicked before they just pass out altogether. I’m winning this game by merit, not default.” As the game started, I found myself letting go. Colby drifted from the forefront of my thoughts. Forgotten were Landon’s supposed feelings for me. And I had fun. I laughed at how incredibly off our aims were. And when one of us succeeded by chance, we’d turn to one another and high-five without even a second thought. We were in sync. We were having fun. And we were winning. The perfect team. Landon tossed the final ball. It bounced effortlessly into a cup, and I squealed as he covered his mouth with his hand. “Ohh, is that what I think it is?” he mocked the losing team. “Isla, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we just kicked some serious ass.” I stared at the table and nodded, my expression one of mock-seriousness. “Why Landon, I believe you are correct.” He then busted out some sort of celebratory end zone dance. Laughing, I nudged him and shook my head. “Okay, okay.” But when he wouldn’t stop, I finally grabbed both his hands. “Oh my god, we won. Now don’t spoil that with whatever this is!” He flipped his hands so that he was now holding my wrist and tugged me into his arms. Then he pumped one hand into the air and shouted, “Victory!

People don’t want hot tubs—not really. They don’t want free snacks or Ping-Pong tables or kombucha on tap. What they really want is freedom and responsibility. They want to be loosely coupled but tightly aligned.

Ha!” Olivia twirls back to us, face shining with arrogance, and she crushes the empty water bottle between her hands. “Gotcha, sucker! You missed!” She claps Jennie’s hand before Emmett embraces her. “I told you he’d fall for it!” he shouts, and Carter curls over with a snarl. I chuck a ping pong ball off the table. “I knew I shoulda been Ollie’s partner again this year. Carter sucks.” “I thought my wife was in labor! This isn’t fair! It’s cheating! I call a rematch!

Strengthen Your Company’s Culture Contrary to what you might have read, you don’t have to provide free food, massages, or ping-pong tables to inspire a great company culture. Workplace surveys after surveys show that what people desire most is making an authentic human connection with their co-workers feeling that their work matters, and having some autonomy over their own time. Tapping into trends can help you strengthen your company’s culture in all these areas.

The shindig lasted into the wee hours. Food tables a disaster zone. Liquor flowing like a faucet. Skee-Balls flying off the table and ping-pong balls being crushed. Then it was time for the hugs and tears. Serge held each of his neighbors by the shoulders, promising never to forget them and that yes, someday he would return. Then it was that moment. Serge and Coleman waved back at everyone gathered outside the condo as they climbed into the Galaxie, speeding off through Key Largo, then onto the “Eighteen-Mile” into Florida City and Homestead, and another long run up Krome Avenue through the endless agricultural expanses with those massive sprinkler machines. Their windows were down, whipping their hair with brisk atmosphere. In the crisp pre-dawn blackness of four a.m., they pulled up to a stoplight at the intersection with the Tamiami Trail. No cars. To the right, the Dade Corners truck stop and airboat culture store. Ahead to the left, the still ridiculously out-of-place Miccosukee casino. The traffic light was unusually long, as was usual, and the cool breeze continued blowing through the open windows. They were at one of those few Florida places that could genuinely be described by any

Clarisse threw her knife on the Ping-Pong table. “All of you can fight this war without Ares. Until I get satisfaction, no one in my cabin is lifting a finger to help. Have fun dying.

I want to choke him. I really do. It might be the end of me, though. This fucking apartment is probably equipped with a mechanism that senses danger. If I lunge for him, the ping-pong table would probably swallow me whole and digest me slowly. Like a high-tech Venus Flytrap.

The Beginning Sergeant Smelly was a normal man. He lived in a normal village, full of normal people and had a normal address. He lived at 1 Normall Street in the village of Normall Normall. The village was so normal they named it twice. His first name was eighty-three percent normal—Norman. Most people knew him as Normal Norman from Normall Normall; a rotund and jolly man who lived an exceedingly normal life. Well, normal, if appearing in court on exploding fart charges was normal. Normal, if producing fire from your butt was normal. All of his body parts were normal. Apart from one: his butt. His butt was abnormal. It used to be a normal butt, but everything changed in the blink of a fart. Sergeant Smelly's face glistened with sweat and his heartbeats quickened as the judge read out the charge. "Sergeant Smelly, you are here today because you could not control your soldiers, not to mention your bottom. You are hereby charged with the crime of producing exploding fire-farts. How do you plead?" asked Army Judge Mental. The stout sergeant considered the question and his thoughts transported him back to the day it all went smelly. One fateful morning, Sergeant Smelly lay in bed suffering from a horrible cold. Empty boxes lay scattered across the floor, and the bin overflowed with used tissues. He groaned as he pulled the last tissue from the box. A passer-by in the street below jumped as he heard the foghorn sound. He inspected the contents of the tissue (Sergeant Smelly, not the passer-by) and wished he had not. It was time for action. The suffering soldier dragged himself out of bed and got dressed. He wore a waterproof jacket on top of his uniform, as his army blazer was not snot-proof. Not that any of his other clothes were snot-proof. He trudged downstairs and made himself a hot lemon with honey, then switched on his laptop. After an extensive internet search, he found the best remedy to fix the cold was to feed it, so he plodded into town and searched for a place to eat. The first eatery he found had a ridiculous name, but the café was almost full. He watched the customers from the window as they tucked into their food. The plain wooden tables and basic white tablecloths oozed simplicity, but the gorgeous grub eclipsed the plain interior. Silence filled the air as customers tucked into delectable dishes and drifted off to food heaven.  But an odorous pong emanated from the café, and it was not the food. Sergeant Smelly did not smell the malodorous stench due to his blocked nose and cold. The cold was so bad it came alive. Colin the Cold smelled the awful pong and begged his owner to reconsider. He tried in vain to turn his attention to the sandwich shop, but Sergeant Smelly did not hear him. Colin the Cold saw disaster around the corner. Major Disaster walked around the corner and greeted him in a bright and cheery fashion. "Morning, Smelly," said Major Disaster in a bright and cheery fashion. Colin the Cold was correct and sensed nothing good would come of Sergeant Smelly eating at Café McPoo. It had Disaster Area written all over it, but the police apprehended the graffiti artist, and he was hard at work wiping the words ‘Disaster Area’ from the front of the café. Colin the Cold frowned and prepared himself for the worst. And so it began.

Elsewhere in London, offices are open plan/floor to ceiling glass/sites of synergy/wireless/gleaming. There persists a belief in the importance of a ping-pong table.

A more mundane threat is the sociopathy of giant Silicon Valley corporations. What can we learn from their rise? Possibly that Hitler might have just about made it if only he’d fitted out the Reichstag with a ping-pong table and some hammocks.

This point was driven home for me for the first time when I was traveling in Asia in 1978 on a trip to a forest monastery in northeastern Thailand, Wat Ba Pong, on the Thai-Lao border. I was taken there by my meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield, who was escorting a group of us to meet the monk under whom he had studied at that forest hermitage. This man, Achaan Chaa, described himself as a “simple forest monk,” and he ran a hundred-acre forest monastery that was simple and old-fashioned, with one notable exception. Unlike most contemporary Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, where the practice of meditation as the Buddha had taught had all but died out, Achaan Chaa’s demanded intensive meditation practice and a slow, deliberate, mindful attention to the mundane details of everyday life. He had developed a reputation as a meditation master of the first order. My own first impressions of this serene environment were redolent of the newly extinguished Vietnam War, scenes of which were imprinted in my memory from years of media attention. The whole place looked extraordinarily fragile to me. On my first day, I was awakened before dawn to accompany the monks on their early morning alms rounds through the countryside. Clad in saffron robes, clutching black begging bowls, they wove single file through the green and brown rice paddies, mist rising, birds singing, as women and children knelt with heads bowed along the paths and held out offerings of sticky rice or fruits. The houses along the way were wooden structures, often perched on stilts, with thatched roofs. Despite the children running back and forth laughing at the odd collection of Westerners trailing the monks, the whole early morning seemed caught in a hush. After breakfasting on the collected food, we were ushered into an audience with Achaan Chaa. A severe-looking man with a kindly twinkle in his eyes, he sat patiently waiting for us to articulate the question that had brought us to him from such a distance. Finally, we made an attempt: “What are you really talking about? What do you mean by ‘eradicating craving’?” Achaan Chaa looked down and smiled faintly. He picked up the glass of drinking water to his left. Holding it up to us, he spoke in the chirpy Lao dialect that was his native tongue: “You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”5 Achaan Chaa was not just talking about the glass, of course, nor was he speaking merely of the phenomenal world, the forest monastery, the body, or the inevitability of death. He was also speaking to each of us about the self. This self that you take to be so real, he was saying, is already broken.

There is an inn, a merry old inn beneath an old grey hill, And there they brew a beer so brown That the Man in the Moon himself came down one night to drink his fill. The ostler has a tipsy cat that plays a five-stringed fiddle; And up and down he runs his bow, Now squeaking high, now purring low, now sawing in the middle. The landlord keeps a little dog that is mighty fond of jokes; When there's good cheer among the guests, He cocks an ear at all the jests and laughs until he chokes. They also keep a horned cow as proud as any queen; But music turns her head like ale, And makes her wave her tufted tail and dance upon the green. And O! the rows of silver dishes and the store of silver spoons! For Sunday there's a special pair, And these they polish up with care on Saturday afternoons. The Man in the Moon was drinking deep, and the cat began to wail; A dish and a spoon on the table danced, The cow in the garden madly pranced, and the little dog chased his tail. The Man in the Moon took another mug, and then rolled beneath his chair; And there he dozed and dreamed of ale, Till in the sky the stars were pale, and dawn was in the air. Then the ostler said to his tipsy cat: ‘The white horses of the Moon, They neigh and champ their silver bits; But their master's been and drowned his wits, and the Sun'll be rising soon!’ So the cat on his fiddle played hey-diddle-diddle, a jig that would wake the dead: He squeaked and sawed and quickened the tune, While the landlord shook the Man in the Moon: 'It's after three!' he said. They rolled the Man slowly up the hill and bundled him into the Moon, While his horses galloped up in rear, And the cow came capering like a deer, and a dish ran up with the spoon. Now quicker the fiddle went deedle-dum-diddle; the dog began to roar, The cow and the horses stood on their heads; The guests all bounded from their beds and danced upon the floor. With a ping and a pong the fiddle-strings broke! the cow jumped over the Moon, And the little dog laughed to see such fun, And the Saturday dish went off at a run with the silver Sunday spoon. The round Moon rolled behind the hill as the Sun raised up her head. She* hardly believed her fiery eyes; For though it was day, to her surprise they all went back to bed!

Palmer was beautiful, though she seemed to have absolutely no understanding of this fact. She had long, thick blond hair that would be four shades lighter by the end of the summer. She was a head shorter than me, and whip-thin, with the ability to eat us all under the table, and she seemed to laugh more than most people...Growing up with four older siblings—two of them boys—meant Palmer was great at this kind of stuff. She’d been the one who taught us how to tap a keg, pack a bowl, and play quarters, beirut, and beer pong. She could change a tire and throw a punch and had learned how to drive when she was something like fourteen.