The Sex Life of a Ping Pong Ball
Manchester Grammar School was reputed to be one of the finest in northern England. It was located in the Fallowfield district of Manchester, next to the Hollings Facility of the now Manchester Metropolitan University, known locally as the toast rack, due to its unique design.
Gareth Taylor traipsed into the classroom designated for that day’s detentions. The room was filling with around thirty miscreants. The air hung heavy with the smell of wet school blazers and stuffy condensation.
Mr Scott was Detention Master. At four o’clock, he began the roll call of those honoured with an extra hour at school to atone for their behaviour.
‘Can I leave at five to five, sir?’ asked Taylor. ‘I’ll miss my bus and train home if not.’
‘This is de-tent-ion,’ stressed Mr Scott, holding onto his jacket lapels and academic gown at the same time. ‘It’s a punishment.’
‘But sir!’ protested Taylor. ‘If I get the five o’clock bus into Manchester, I can catch the five thirty train home.’
Gareth had to take a further train from Southport to Birkdale station, followed by a four-minute walk to his home in Westcliffe Road. It was nearly three hours’ travel each day.
‘Maybe if you had chosen not to be ejected from Mr Casey’s maths lesson, you would already be on your way home.’
He had taught Taylor the previous year. Mr Scott knew him to be clever, but mischievous. Mr Scott went to his desk and gathered a pile of laminated cards, five inches by three inches in size. He walked past each seated pupil and put a card, face down, on the desk.
‘Leave it alone until you’re told, laddie!’ he instructed the boy behind without turning around. Two plus decades of teaching meant he had seen pretty much everything, good and bad. Mr Scott strode to the desk at the front of the room and turned to address the pupils.
‘On the other side of the card is your subject. You have an hour to write a two-hundred-word essay. Gentlemen, you may start.’
Gareth turned his card over.
Discuss and explain the sex life of a ping pong ball.
He leaned back in his chair and let his mind wander.
Ping pong balls, as sealed objects, reproduce differently from any other species. They cannot open or close. They harness extreme high-energy particles contained in their mitochondria. The female initiates reproduction. Upon sensing a male, she emits low level beams of positively-charged radiation. As the male gets closer, these beams intensify. The male emits negatively charged particles, dragging the two spheres together. When they touch, the intensity of radiation increases to near fusion temperatures for 2 nanoseconds.
A ping pong ball’s sex is determined by which particle is the primary connection. Positive-negative is female. Negative-positive is male.
Gestation takes one minute. A small sphere is formed on the surface of the male. The baby ping pong ball expands at a frightening rate until fully formed and capable of reproduction. This partially explains why 2 ping pong balls are packed into huge boxes. A box with a capacity of 144 balls will fill in approximately 5 minutes.
Radiation detectors have been used in lab-scale tests and found energy levels may be enough to generate electricity. There is a joint initiative between CERN and NASA to build a pilot plant. They want to research how this energy can be harnesses for the benefit of mankind.
‘Taylor. Get you bags and come with me.’ Mr Scott took him into the corridor, outside the detention room.
‘I was your form teacher. You spent the year bottom of the class and miraculously come second or third at exam time. You don’t play school sport, but you’re in the Merseyside Under 15 tennis squad. You have at least one detention a week. Tell me, what do you do on the train?’
‘Homework, sir. On the way to school, I read ahead.’
‘Can I suggest, Mr Taylor, you’re bored, academically.’
Gareth looked to the floor. He liked Mr Scott and disappointing him hurt.
‘Next year is your O-levels. Two years after is your A-levels, then university. Have you thought what you want to study?’
‘No, sir,’ was the instant student reaction.
‘How about Engineering? You could go to Oxford or Cambridge. In each academic year, our top few students generally get accepted into Oxbridge. A good set of O-levels gives you that option, Gareth.’
Shit! Gareth! Teachers never used first names.
‘You fear people thinking you’re a swot. You tell them your results were because of flukey questions. You play sport in Merseyside so people from school won’t see you. Living in Southport means your mates aren’t MGS boys.’ Mr Scott looked at his watch.
‘We have some very able students. You’re one of them. Try applying yourself and stop wasting your time in detention. Go home.’
Gareth walked quickly to the bus stop. He could make the 5.30 train. Maybe his parents wouldn’t know he’d misbehaved again.
* * * *
‘We are delighted to have an Old Mancunian of some note,’ said the Headmaster at the annual Founders’ Day. ‘Professor Sir Gareth Taylor completed his PhD at Cambridge in molecular physics and was invited to continue research at the prestigious CERN facility in Switzerland. He transferred to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the USA which was founded as part of the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear bomb…’
….‘I owe a great deal of my success to being given a detention. Patrick Scott asked me about my ambitions and I had to confess that, at the age of fifteen, I had none.
‘Many OMs, teachers and possibly the older students will remember Patrick Scott with much fondness. He was an officer during National Service. My dad and his friends were Privates.
‘For my punishment essay, I came up with a ridiculous theory about radiation. The subject was the sex life of a ping pong ball. Maybe he knew how to motivate me, and I hope my talk tonight will go some way in motivating you…..’
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