Opinion | Why I Finally Ditched My Air Hockey Table This Christmas

You knew you would never own a model at a bowling alley. It was the size of a seemingly small boat, and ran on a more powerful motor than its neighbor Chevet. The home version was slow and light, and if you hit the puck too hard it could fly off the table and cause serious harm to your loved ones.

The ping pong table and pool table were for adults. Foosball got boring after 10 minutes. Air hockey stood alone.

I didn’t really want it when I was a kid, but that table was never possible. There was never a finished basement, and it would never replace my mother’s piano. I decided not to take it away. We had a basement, and air hockey was going to be played in that basement, with Wayne Gretzky as a witness.

There is an entire industry dedicated to indulging in this nostalgia. You can find dozens of air hockey tables online, from cheaply made tabletop versions to near-commercial-grade models costing over $1,000.

Let’s say I’m near the end of that spectrum.

I think you knew right away that the air hockey table was destined to be the world’s most expensive holder of discarded sweatshirts. It was placed in the basement in an assembled state.

They used to play with it during sleepovers from time to time, and on that occasion I heard it thump downstairs and rise above the soothing hum of the motor, and I thought to myself: yes. This is what childhood should be.

But to them, air hockey was just a toy, no better or worse than the plastic roller coaster alternatives, and far more low-tech than the Xbox. In their imagination it did not occupy an exotic place.

Looking back now, it’s clear that my childhood dream wasn’t air hockey, but friendships. My father worked all the time, my mother took over the family business, and my two older sisters had no interest in baseball or superheroes. I spent a lot of time hanging out by myself, sorting out baseball cards, reading books, and building things.

The air hockey table represented a tandem activity that no one could resist. It’s like “I’ll come when I make it”. Somehow, if you have one at home, you’ll never be lonely again.

But, of course, my kids have never known loneliness… Their world is one of instant and constant connectivity: FaceTime and Discord, Minecraft and Fortnite. Even though they are alone in the room, they are never alone. You should always assume that there is an invisible audience lurking when you enter.

Our children are so lucky — children who grow up in this virtual world know that for one reason or another they are excluded from their peers. , I wonder if there’s some value in steadily honing the invaluable skills of imagination and independence and dreaming of heroic pursuits.

I worry myself: How do I learn to be alone when I am rarely alone? It makes sense that I hope they never have to know mosquito?

This Christmas we bought some new exercise equipment for our basement and finally admitted that the air hockey table had to move. On Christmas Eve I saw them carry away the air hockey table I had wanted for so long.

I never miss it. These days my wife and kids are always out at 8-ball and hoop games. All I have to do is go online.