For a bored teenager in the early 1970s, the arrival of Tower Mall in our neighborhood seemed too good to be true. On one summer day in 1971, this turned out to be truer than I could have ever imagined.
That day, the entrance to the Valu-Mart store was cleared out and a single pingpong table assembled where everyone entering the discount store would see it.
“Sign up right here,” a store manager in a red-plaid polyester blazer announced to the assembling crowd. “Our champion pingpong player just back from China is here to take on all comers.”
Judy Bochenski was tall and long-armed, with thick dark hair curled above her shoulders and the easy, confident grace that comes with natural athletic talent. She was also 15 years old, and a member of the United States Table Tennis team that made headlines in the spring of 1971 by traveling to China to take part in a tournament. They were the first official American delegation to travel to that country since the rise of Communism in 1949. Pingpong diplomacy was the rage.
I’m not sure if my brother David and friend Doug agreed that I would be the one to sign up, or if I just put my name down before they did. We were warned that Judy would only play for about an hour, and might not be able to take on everyone who wanted to play.
The ground rules were simple: If she could score five unanswered points, you were out. Otherwise, the game would be won by the first player to score 21 points, and beat their opponent by at least two points.
Judy mowed through the assembled table tennis players with ease. When an opponent leaned left on a return, she would fire the white ball to the right. Watching from the relative comfort of a side view, I had hope I would be a memorable competitor.
The store manager would call out another name from the clipboard sign-in sheet after the teenager, barely older than me, dispatched yet another victim. The time seemed to speed by, and the hour was nearly over. There seemed little chance I would play Judy, so David, Doug and I began pulling nickels and dimes from our pockets, trying to come up with enough money to buy a few bags of popcorn we could split on the way home.
The event was winding down and the crowd began dispersing. The store manager conferred with Judy and her dad before turning to the stragglers still assembled around the green pingpong table. “OK,” the man announced, “Judy will take on one more challenge. Steve Becker is the final challenger.”
I glanced at the pingpong table, planning out how I would try to serve and return the ball. As it turns out, had I stood there and done nothing the outcome of this match would have been precisely the same.
Suddenly, there was this sensation of the pingpong ball rocketing past my right ear. Judy returned my serve so hard and so fast, I didn’t even see the ball as it sped over the net, glancing off my side of the table before flying past my paddle.
I tried to plant my feet more firmly on second serve and widen my view of my opponent and the table. A cheer went up from David and Doug when the paddle in my hand managed to tap the ball, sending it wildly out of control and out of play. Judy had generously lathered the ball with a back spin, gaining the serve and putting me down, 0-2.
Judy served the little white ball so low over the net, I stumbled forward and hit the ball into the net on my side of the table. Judy’s serve, 0-3. Anticipating a similar serve, I stood closer to the end line, only to have the ball slap the table, bounce off my belt buckle and out of play; 0-4 Judy. The serve came back to me while I pleaded with a higher power, any higher power, to help me score one point.
After the humiliation of the score off my belt, I decided to back way up from the end line. Two voices cheered when my clean serve made it over the net to Judy. The cheers faded quickly as she deftly tapped the return ball so close to the net it was impossible for me get there before it bounced gently, dabbling off the table and onto the floor.
Applause went up as Judy, with a warm smile on her face, jogged over to shake my hand.
“You’ve got quite a cheering section,” she exclaimed as the applause faded, and a crew from the store began disassembling the pingpong table.
In a matter of minutes it was over. Judy and her family left for their next exhibition and the pingpong table was folded and wheeled away while a janitor pushing a broom cleaned up stray popcorn kernels, candy wrappers and broken pingpong balls before returning a more typical store display to its place.
I’m sure, on the bike ride home, we decided we would play pingpong as soon as we got there. Since I was the loser, I would have to play last.
About five years ago, I called Judy. She said events like the one at Tower Mall paid for her trips to competitive tournaments around the country. She had no memory of me or that day at Valu-Mart. I was crushed!
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