Zen and the Art of Sledgehammer Ping-Pong Ball Juggling

At roughly the halfway point of the documentary on flat earthers, I sat up abruptly. My sudden movement startled my wife, whose eyes darted up from the game of solitaire she’d been playing on her phone between brief, disapproving head shakes about this stupid movie.

“Look at that! Did you see that?” I exclaimed, as I paused the movie and fumbled with the remote, trying to figure out how to rewind.

“What!? What?!” she yelped back, looking around the room.

I pointed at the TV, “Did you see what that guy with the ponytail was just doing? I swear I must be losing my mind. Also, how do you rewind this darn thing?”

Dana accepted the offered remote and deftly rewound the movie.

“Slower…” I cautioned, not wanting to miss the spot. I still wasn’t sure I’d seen what I thought I had.

Finally, after a few moments, I saw the ponytailed man doing performing the unimaginable feat. “THERE!” I yelled again, making Dana jump for the second time in the span of just a few moments.

“What the…” she said breathlessly, as we both witnessed the glory of what was playing out in front of us.

As b-roll on this movie, the documentarians decided to show one of the flat earthers juggling ping-pong balls with two sledgehammers, one in each hand. There was no explanation of this skill, nor was there any mention of it after the fact. They simply showed him juggling, then cut to the next scene where two other skeptics were seen giggling as they walked through a museum dedicated to outer space expeditions.

I rewound the movie at least ten times, long after Dana had returned to her game of solitaire and had lost interest in this finding.

Eventually, we both agreed that it was time we went to bed. The alarm clock was going to go off before we knew it, signaling the start of another day working the customer service desk at Best Buy. Undoubtedly, the next day, just like most of the days before it, would consist of an endless line of irate customers who wondered why they had to continue to buy ink for their printers. “Why can’t it just refill itself?” was a surprisingly common question.

But while I usually fell asleep immediately upon lying down, this night was different. I couldn’t shake the image of the ponytailed man performing this extreme skill.

Thoughts raced through my head:

How could he have possibly learned to do that?

Why would anyone ever want to learn such a skill?

And then one thought burrowed into my brain, preventing me from falling asleep:

I have to meet him.

I gently extricated myself from the tangled mess of comforter and was able to leave Dana undisturbed as I made my way downstairs to the computer.

It took only about 15 minutes of research to find the guy’s name and his website.

The website was absolutely astonishing. If they are ever looking for another wonder of the world, I think this domain should bear consideration.

Every page of the site was filled with conspiracies and there wasn’t even an ounce of organization or forethought put into the layout. Links were everywhere, many of them stretching off the viewable limit of the page and leading to websites that were no longer maintained.

There were pictures of aliens and pyramids with poorly placed arrows seemingly linking the two objects together in some convoluted way. Unhelpful messages, such as 8 question marks in a row, covered the faces of random, low-level political officials from around the world.

Needless to say, the “contact me” link was hard to come by.

Finally, through perseverance alone, I found what appeared to be his email address, which I copied and pasted into a draft letter:

To: thisisasimulation@hotmail.com

From: mike_p_311@gmail.com

Hello Mr. David Grimm,

My name is Mike Palmer. I saw you featured in a documentary recently and had some questions.

Perhaps surprisingly, my questions aren’t really about the content of the movie, but rather about a skill you demonstrated with some sledgehammers and what looked to be ping-pong balls.

Would you be willing to meet either in person or through video conference?

Best Regards,

Mike Palmer

I hesitated briefly before sending. I didn’t necessarily think the man was dangerous, per se. Rather, I was a little concerned that if I opened the door to conversation with him I might end up subscribed to some conspiracist magazines that would take months to get out of.

But after some deep breaths and some rhythmic chanting of “what’s the worst that could happen?”, I hit send.

After sending, I looked at the time and realized it was nearly midnight. I didn’t know where he lived or what time it was for him, but either way, it was probably a good idea for me to get some sleep. I’d taken the necessary steps to meet this compelling person. Now all I could do was wait.

But as I went to close the laptop, I received an almost immediate reply from David.

M-K-,

I’d be happy to meet. In person is preferable. Also, please don’t use my full name through email correspondence. The use of full names (with vowels included) in emails triggers the Bartoli algorithm and contributes to poverty in Siberia. I’d be happy to discuss this further when we meet. I’m in P-ttsb-rgh, P-.

Are you close by?

-/\

~Squirrels are in your imagination~

I couldn’t believe my luck. This lunatic lived in my city!

After we had exchanged a few emails, we agreed to meet in a Busy Beaver parking lot on Saturday, just two days away.

I finally went to sleep that night and somehow made it through the next two days at work.

When Saturday came, I got to the Busy Beaver two hours early, filled with excitement. Dana made me promise to text her every hour to assure her that I was still free from sledgehammer, ping-pong, or flat earther-related injury.

As I waited for David to arrive, I paced around the parking lot, receiving the justified stares of all the home improvement mavens and contractors as they made their way into and out of the store.

Finally, as the clock struck 10:30, a full half-hour past our agreed-upon meeting time, I resigned myself to the fact that he wasn’t coming.

I texted Dana to let her know that I’d be coming home, without having met the man.

But just as I opened my driver’s side door, I heard the frantic, muted beeping of a car horn close by.

Once I located the source of this beeping, my heart skipped a beat. It was him! David Grimm was here, in the flesh, hiding in a sedan that would never, in a million years pass inspection in the state of Pennsylvania.

He got out of the car warily and closely inspected my proffered hand before taking it and giving it a tentative shake.

“David, Hi! It’s so nice to..”

“Shh!!” He cut me off. “Refer to me only as Nightowl. I’ll call you…BennyJet.”

Before I could say more, he’d darted to the trunk of his car he came back around awkwardly holding a bag of ping-pong balls and 4 sledgehammers.

He offered me two of the sledgehammers.

“Oh! No. I…” But he was so insistent as he thrust the hammers at me that I had no choice but to accept.

During this time, a few patrons of the store had hurried to their cars and left seemingly without buying anything. They must have smelled trouble. Perhaps I should have too, but I hadn’t come this far to stop now.

Without another word, he tossed three ping-pong balls high in the air, one after the other. He then grabbed his sledgehammers and, with an absolutely unwavering look of concentration, began to perfectly bounce and juggle the balls as they descended.

It was miraculous. I’d never been as good at anything in my life as he was at this.

After a few short minutes, he barked out, “Throw another ball in!”

I was frozen. I was simply a spectator watching in amazement. But since he had begun, a small crowd had formed around us and one of the other spectators grabbed a ball and threw it up to join the others.

After a few recovery juggles, he was back on track, now juggling four ping-pong balls.

Visible sweat was beginning to form on his face, but his pace didn’t slow. He began performing spins and one-legged balancing feats then, incredibly, he called for a fifth ball.

By now there was a palpable energy in the growing circle around us. People were cheering him on and one young boy rushed to throw the new ball into the mix, bringing the total to 5.

His pace was now frantic and his concentration absolute. It reminded me of the scene in 300 when Leonidas throws the spear at Xerxes. This was every bit as impressive and possibly even more so.

After a few more tricks and a flourish, he knocked all of the balls high in the air, set down the sledgehammers, and caught them all as they fell.

There was a brief moment of absolute silence, then a deafening roar as the crowd burst into applause.

He nodded his thanks a few times, looking around apprehensively, searching for any possible threat.

Then, after taking only a moment to enjoy the reception he just received, he turned to me and said, “Well? Now it’s your turn.”

The crowd offered a few more congratulations then began to inch away, clearly realizing that I was a beginner and would offer nothing even closely resembling what they just watched.

“But that was amazing! Can we talk about what you just did?”

He waved me off, “No, BennyJet. You have to learn the basic skills of this craft if you wish to ask me any questions. That is your ‘troll toll’, so to speak. It’s how I’ll know I can trust you. A sledgehammer bond is a bond for life.”

I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I wanted to be sledgehammer bonded with anyone, let alone this guy. But life up to this point had been objectively unfulfilling. These past few days had been the most exciting ones I’d had in recent memory.

Perhaps I could try something new.

He instructed me to start with one ball. I was to pass the ball in an arc back and forth between my hammers.

I had to choke way up on the hammers to even be able to use them, and it was then that I realized what incredible strength this man must possess.

After a few minutes, I was able to get about 5 or 10 passes in a row before missing the ball or having it bounce off at an odd angle.

“Focus on your breathing first, and the skill second,” he instructed, like a sage from a fantasy tale teaching his apprentice the skills of combat.

I began to listen to him fully and without question. I slowed my breathing and began to enter a flow state. It was as if I could predict the path of the ball before it even contacted the hammer’s head. My muscles ached but this didn’t seem to affect my abilities in any noticeable way. In fact, I even moved my hands back down the handles, lengthening the moment arm.

By this time, I’d forgotten why I’d even come to this parking lot, and totally forgotten my memorized list of interview questions. I was now one with my hammers.

As I improved with one ball, he added a second. Once I’d mastered two balls, I moved on to three. But when he introduced the fourth, I was so exhausted mentally and physically that I couldn’t keep up. I lost my focus and dropped the hammers.

He came over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Good,” was all he said.

As he collected up his hammers and balls I lay down right where I was in the parking lot, feeling my heart rate and breathing begin to slow. I sat up quickly as I heard what sounded to be cannonballs being fired in quick succession. I soon realized that this was the sound of David’s engine starting up. He backed out of the parking lot and drove off without so much as a wave or a look back.

Reality hit me like a ton of bricks at this point. Dana! I thought. I hadn’t kept up with our agreed-upon texting plan. I fumbled for my phone but stopped when I heard her familiar footsteps behind me.

I turned around and started to apologize, but saw that she was smiling broadly.

“When you didn’t answer my texts, I got worried and came down.” She paused for a moment. “You got really good at that very quickly!”

I reddened slightly and looked away, feeling foolish.

She hugged me and whispered, “This is the happiest I’ve seen you in a very long time.”

I thought about her words and had to agree.

-

When I got back home and showered off from my epic 4-hour experience, I checked my email. There was some strange-looking message from an account I didn’t recognize. Poorly hidden within this message was a simple line: same time next Saturday?

I smiled as I wrote back, Hell ya, Nightowl.

And so, what started off as a malicious quest: me wanting to meet a man whom I thought was a freak, a man I could shamelessly mock, blossomed into a true friendship. Over the course of our weekly lessons, I learned how to do more and more tricks with the sledgehammers. Sometimes, David would get spooked and rush off without a word. Other times, we’d grab lunch and go to a nearby park after the lesson.

Over the next few weeks and to this day, I’ve learned a lot about him, a lot about myself, about the danger of making assumptions, and about the art of sledgehammer ping-pong juggling.