Pong is played by almost everyone, adored by most and grudgingly tolerated by the few people who haven't discovered the joy of the perfect sink. It has its own little rituals the postgame hugs and handshakes, the language of calling line. But it is also, hands down, the grossest, germiest, grimiest game ever.
The setting
Everyone knows that frat basements are the dirtiest places on campus. People boot there. People pee there. Both those things could be avoided. What you can't change, however, is that people walk around all day on the Green and the sidewalk and jaywalk across streets that cars drive on, and then wear these same shoes in their basements. This wouldn't be so bad if the floors were dry, but because of aforementioned bodily fluids and the fact that people dump beer on the ground all the time, every basement is covered in a delicious cocktail of filth. So basically, when you play pong, you are letting the ball loose into a jungle of bacteria and dog poop and dirt. You know that statistic that people accidentally ingest eight ground-up spiders every year? I bet at Dartmouth, it's more like 20.
The ball
Think about the beginning of a pong game. Unless the last cup was sunk, the ball is probably under the table, buried under a mountain of used cups and dumped beer or rolling around on the floor in mung. Some people like a wet ball. Those people will pick a ball up off the floor and pour beer over it to "clean" it at the beginning of the game. That takes a while, though, and you can't just keep pouring out beer whenever it's your serve, so eventually people just end up dunking the ball in a water cup oh, wait. Every time you drink out of a cup that someone's "cleaned" the ball into, you're drinking basement juice. If you're in AD, you're probably drinking someone's pee. Yum!
The paddles
A couple things about pong paddles. One: A lot of guys store paddles in their pants. I have never understood this and never will, but if you're not careful you could wind up essentially licking someone's butt (or something much worse depending on their paddle placement). Two: Sandpaper paddles definitely trap dirt. Three: A lot of paddles are soggy and found on the floor. Then you hold it with your hand, and you use that hand to hold the ball, and that ball falls into beer and you get the point.
The cups
The cups are probably the only clean part of pong. Thank God we use new ones every game.
The players
A lot of the time, you play pong with your friend so you know they're not going to give you mono unless they don't know they have it yet. But very often, you are playing pong with someone who was a complete stranger until five minutes ago. What do you know about this guy? I once saw a Phi Delt serve, boot into a trash can a foot away and recover in time to return the ball. I guess in that situation, everyone is aware that the booting occurred, but what's to say that wasn't your current partner five seconds before you walked into the basement? And now you're sharing a cup with him. Ponder that.
