Risking the wrath of her editor (henceforth rightly referred to as a divinity), Jean Ellen Cowgill refuses to psychoanalyze pong. She does, however, psychoanalyze her refusal to psychoanalyze. So go figure.
Okay, Mirror gods, I refuse. It's not that I don't appreciate your position. I understand that this is the "pong issue," and that you cannot rest until you have covered the stats of pong, the types of pong, the history of pong, the pros and cons of pong and, well, every other possible angle on the game. You are the Mirror powers-that-be. You are just doing your job.
As your resident columnist on the Dartmouth psyche, I understand that you therefore expected me to write something along the lines of "Why We Play." You probably had even considered changing my title this week to something appropriately clever like "The Pong in Our Brains," with a mocking, excessively somber subtitle like "For the love of the game." You anticipated that I would make glib, albeit obvious, insights such as:
"Pong caters to the competitive Ivy League spirit hidden inside the outwardly cavalier Dartmouthian."
Or:
"An easy form of socializing without actually talking."
Or:
"What else could function as a frat basement focal point?"
And on I would go until I had dissected each aspect of the drinking game, explaining ad nauseum every possible reason a student would want to pick up a paddle. Essentially, my Mirror superiors, you thought if you did your job, I would do mine.
But alas! My heart is not in it. Something about the task seems inherently wrong. It's one thing to psychoanalyze Dartmouth stereotypes, or awkwardness, or big weekends, or social spaces. But pong is different. Pong offers us a reprieve from our thought-filled days. It offers a thesis-weary senior, surrounded by her books, articles, reviews, pages splashed with red ink and crossed-out paragraphs, e-mails from her advisor and lots of bad food decisions, the hope that somewhere at the end of this over-intellectualized tunnel lies a game where she does not have to think. In fact, analysis of any kind would only be detrimental. She must only stare blankly at the golden cups ahead of her and swat little white balls away from her face. And when she pictures that day -- the day when she will no longer sit and think, and think, and think -- she smiles wearily.
And then she returns to page 23 of chapter four (Yes, fellow history thesis writers, I admit it! I haven't finished the last chapter, okay? Yes, I know our presentations are a week away! Are you happy now?!).
I cannot, in good faith, analyze pong. It is not in keeping with the spirit of the game.
I realize that some of you probably do not enjoy pong; I do not fault you for your disgust. To be honest, you have every reason to dislike the game. The ball that falls in your drink spends much of its time in frat floor mung. The paddle has no handle. You have to drink an inordinate amount of low quality beer (that "tastes like semen" according to an anonymous '08) in a ridiculously short amount of time. Or, as Sarah Herringer '08 said, "I'm just not good at it." You, the pong haters, have reason on your side.
But reason has never been pong's realm. Pong is Dartmouth's guilty pleasure. It's that really stupid movie that you watch again and again. It's the EBAs you know you'll regret but tastes so good at 2 a.m. It's the wasted hours looking at other people's photos on Facebook or inane videos on YouTube. I refuse to tear pong apart. As my grandmother would say about white shoes after Labor Day, "It's just not right."
And so, Mirror powers-that-be, I apologize that I am unable to uphold my side of our journalistic bargain, but I need the pong gods on my side next week, post-thesis presentation.
Jean Ellen is a staff writer for The Mirror.
