It Is On

My eight year old son Ian and I have a long term bet: he must beat me at ping-pong before he turns thirteen years of age, and the stakes are two pounds of high quality chocolate; the interesting thing is that if I wasn't so proud, I could easily win this bet by simply refusing to play him in ping-pong until he turns thirteen years of age, but of course, I won't do that, both because it would be "cheap" -- Ian's term for this strategy -- and also because I know that my future in athletics is limited, and that soon enough my kids will be able to outplay me at soccer, basketball, snowboarding, and tennis, but even as I age, I should be able to fend them off at games like darts, corn-hole and ping-pong (perhaps indefinitely . . . my goal is for my children never to beat me at these particular games . . . so that long after I am dead, they will have to say to their own children, "you know, I never once beat your grandfather at ___________" and if they lie about this and there is an afterlife, then I will certainly go poltergeist on their asses until they admit the truth, with no obfuscation, and perhaps -- if I am a very skillful poltergeist -- then I will even beat them at these games from the grave (that's actually a fantastic idea for a not-so-scary horror movie . . . a guy takes his family to an isolated Maine hotel for the off-season and goes crazy because he can't beat a trash-talking ghost at ping-pong).