I Am a Paddle Ball Ninja

Last night my boyfriend and I went to my co-worker Dennis’s house for his birthday celebration. On the way to the party we stopped to shoot some footage of a hurricane coming up the coast. We managed to record humongous waves slamming into the concrete walls of an abandoned building on the shore. It was quite beautiful, and I imagined it would be a welcome addition to some future video project.

We arrived at Dennis’s house, where upon entering the house I gave him his birthday present: a paddle ball.

He was, of course, thrilled with the present and invited us in.

For the rest of the evening we partied our heads off, and then woke on Dennis’s floor in the morning with absolutely no recollection of the night before. Dennis stumbled into the room, “Man that was a hell of a night last night.” Then he pointed to the ceiling, “OK, I definitely don’t remember doing that.”

Suspended from the ceiling were hundreds of paddle balls. The paddles were removed, and the balls were suspended from the ceiling by their rubber bands at varying heights. They were multicolored, and swayed in the breeze from the open living room window.

“Wow!” I gaped at the ceiling, “It’s kinda pretty.” My boyfriend scratched his head in agreement. He’s a man of few words, I like to say that it’s because he only knows a few. I briefly wondered where all those paddles ended up, and then decided that I really did not want to know.

“So, do you have any idea what happened last night?” Dennis asked, yawning.

I thought about it for a few seconds, as I strained to remember, “No, I really don’t.” Then I saw it sitting innocently on the coffee table, its silver casing shining in the faint stream of sunlight. “But I am sure we have video of whatever the hell we did last night.”

The three of us gathered around the camera’s tiny display screen and watched the footage of the hurricane ravaging the concrete walls. “What is this crap?” Dennis asked impatiently. “Fast forward! Fast Forward!”

We watched the disjointed video from the night before of all of our drunken antics. We winced at a few of the more embarrassing moments, and laughed at others. I uttered the phrase, “Oh no I most certainly did not do that!” at several moments during the viewing.

The video ended with a clear picture of Dennis’s couch. Then I entered the picture from behind the camera wearing my green wool cardigan sweater. At some point during the night I must have gone home to get it. The camera tipped on an angle; I must have failed to prop it upright. I whipped out the paddle ball from behind my back and held it out to the camera and roared, “I! AM! A! PADDLE! BALL! NINJA!”

In my drunken mind the paddle ball was converted into a pair of nunchucks. I swung the paddle ball wildly in front of myself. I may have squealed like a ninja from a Kung Fu movie, I will neither confirm nor deny this. The ball, tethered to the end of the rubber band stretched to the limits out of frame a few times as I whirled it around as they taught me in my paddle ball ninja dojo. Then the ball smacked me in the temple and I groaned out a soft, “Oof!” I reached out to the camera and shut it off, and the video ended in static.

I rolled over and laughed into my pillow this morning, that is before it occurred to me that I may have shouted out “I am a paddle ball ninja!” in my sleep.

Analyze THAT!