The Sex Life of a Ping Pong Ball

Gareth Taylor traipsed into the classroom designated for that day’s detentions. The room was filling with 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. ‘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.’

Taylor 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 the 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 on the desk.

‘Leave it alone until you’re told, laddie!’ he instructed a boy without turning around. Two plus decades of teaching meant he had seen everything, good and bad. Mr Scott strode to the front of the room and addressed 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.’

Taylor 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 to any other species. 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 found energy levels may be enough to generate electricity....

‘Taylor. Get you bags and come with me.’ Mr Scott took him into the corridor, outside the detention room.

‘You spent last year bottom of the class and miraculously came second 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, your behaviour stems from being bored, academically.’

He 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 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 will help, Gareth.’

Shit! Gareth! Teachers never used first names.

‘You fear people thinking you’re a swot. You play sport in Merseyside so your peers won’t see you. Living in Southport means your friends aren’t Manchester Grammar 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.’

Taylor walked quickly to the bus stop. He should make the 5.30 train. Maybe his parents wouldn’t know he’d misbehaved.

‘We’re 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 by 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 older students will remember Patrick Scott with much fondness. He was an officer during National Service when 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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