The Birth of Air Hockey

Air hockey has always been one of my favorite bohemian sports. It's something that anyone can be decent at, but only few can excel at. Kind of like Othello or hot dog eating contests. Air hockey tables are amazing devices that defy science and logic. The sport is both refreshing and blood curdling. It is a sport of death, not of life. And so, I take a brief look at this marvelous arcade game, which has been with man for ages.

The concept of the game is simple: two people face off in a brutal blood sport to see who is a better person. To do this, each person stands at one end of the table, and they knock a thin, NASA-developed, puck back and forth with two sticks/bats/paddles. No one knows exactly what the device that you hit the puck with is actually called... but I once heard someone call them bats, so that's what I will call them. You knock the puck around with these bats, and the objective is to shoot the puck into your opponent's goal, which is a small slot on the end of each table. You play until the set score is reached, or until someone dies. (While I prefer to play to the death, usually we reach the score first)

The table itself is a marvel of modern mechanics. No scientist or philosopher has ever been able to figure out how the air is created inside of this magic table. But air, which is magically created inside of the magic table, is blown through thousands of tiny holes that are evenly spaced on the surface of the table. This causes the puck to float off of the ground. NASA used the same magic tables when it fooled America into thinking it landed on the moon. The air hockey table was not invented by any one man... it was discovered.

The air hockey table was first discovered in the mountains of Chile in 451AD. Two native indians (native meaning from South America, not native indians from North America... that would be silly) were hiking in the chilly Chile mountains when they felt a strong wind coming from inside of a cave. They entered the cave, and deep within its recesses they found two medium sized magical tables sitting next to a bubbling spring. The natives were able to lure the tables out of their home, and bring them back to the farm, where they were bred. The tables soon became so numerous, and windy, that the indians let some of them free. These tables soon migrated north, where the climate was slightly warmer and where people were more supportive of things that blew air for no productive reason.

At first, people up north didn't exactly know what to do with these magic tables. They tried eating off of them, but all of their plastic-ware and napkins fell off and got dirty. They tried playing board-games on them, but during a game of Axis and Allies, everyone's eyes got so dry that they couldn't blink for a week. The indigenous people finally tried to use the tables as Faberge Egg holders, but if you couldn't guess... that ended in disaster as well.

Finally, a man by the name of Peter Puck stumbled upon a tribe that had one of these magic tables. Upon inquiring about its uses, they immediately gave the table to him. When he walked it back to his house, he planned on having his tea time on it. When Peter set down his small saucer, it started to slide. Seeing promise in this discovery, he got out two of his juicers and used them as bats to knock the saucer around... and so the game was invented.

Air hockey has seen great success over the decades of its existence. It was even adapted into a video-game in the 1970's known as "Pong." Unfortunately, Pong never experienced the success of the real deal.

Air hockey tables today are finally accepted in North American culture, as with the rest of the world. This is more than I can say for the Koosh that came out of Canada.