The Upside-Down Trapezoid

A stranger with an unusual paddle walked into Mar-Mar’s Bar and Grill on ping pong night. Nobody knew his name, and nobody would forget what happened next.

Episode Transcript

Rob (00:00):
Hi, I'm Rob.
Tale Number 66.
The Upside Down Trapezoid.
Jeremiah loves ping pong.

(00:22):
He goes to his local sportsbar, Mar-Mar's, to play two
nights a week, Tuesdays andThursdays.
And the setup is pretty simple.
There is one ping pong table inthe back of the bar, and its
winner stays on.
So there's a chalkboard with alist of names on it.
When you arrive, you put yourname at the bottom of the list,
you grab a beer or your drink ofchoice, and you hang around the

(00:46):
ping pong table socializinguntil it's your turn.
When a match is over, The loserleaves the table and the next
person on the list is up.
And it's a pretty good system.
The only weird thing is thatsometimes someone will be really
good so they can stay on allnight.
Some places with ping pongtables, they'll like have a rule
if you win 10 games in a row,you have to go back to the

(01:08):
bottom of the list.
But not Mar-Mar's.
So there were a couple peoplethat, you know, if they came in
and played, they would usuallyplay all night basically because
no one was good enough to beatthem.
And the night that we'respeaking of, was one of those
nights.
This guy Kelvin, he was playingand he's really good at table
tennis.
He had been playing since hewas a little kid.
He was on the high school team.

(01:29):
He was good and he was cocky.
So he was annoying also.
Sometimes after he had won abunch of games in a row, he'd do
weird things like take his shoeoff and put it on his hand and
play with his shoe as his paddleand he would still beat
everyone.
He was very good.
And so Jeremiah's waiting histurn.
Kelvin's probably won five Fiveor six games in a row.

(01:51):
The next name on the board isStephen S.
Stephen walks up to the tablewith his paddle.
Jeremiah, who's sitting at thebar watching, doesn't recognize
Stephen.
He's never seen him therebefore.
Kelvin is not playing with hisshoe tonight.
He's just playing with a normalpaddle.
The game begins.
Stephen is serving.
He hits it over the net toKelvin.

(02:13):
Kelvin hits it back and Stephenreturns it hard.
The ball goes over the net,bounces on Kelvin's side of the
table, and then shoots up andhits him right in the face.
And he's shocked, but it's nota huge deal.
It's a ping pong ball.
And he shakes it off.
So that's one to nothingStephen.
This surprises everyone.

(02:34):
They're not used to seeingKelvin lose many points.
So it gets the attention of theroom.
Stephen serves again.
The ball hits on his side ofthe table, goes over the net,
bounces on Kelvin's side of thetable.
Kelvin does a quick return.
And then again, Stephen justblasts it back at him.
The ball hits the table,bounces up, and hits Kelvin in
the chin this time.

(02:54):
2-0 Stephen.
Both of his returns have hitKelvin in the face.
Stephen serves again.
Kelvin returns.
Stephen returns that.
Kelvin hits it back.
Stephen zings it to the cornerof the table.
Kelvin almost has to dive tohit the ball.
And in a situation like that,you're just trying to get it
back on the other side of thetable, not really trying trying
to score a point.

(03:15):
So he hits like a high floater.
In table tennis, when someonelike floats it to you like that,
it's the perfect opportunity toslam it back at them.
So this high floating shotlands on Steven's side of the
table and he rears back and doesa power slam as hard as he can.
It hits on Kelvin's side of thetable.
It bounces up and it actuallygoes into Kelvin's mouth and his

(03:37):
eyes just open really wide.
He's shocked.
And the entire bar just gasps.
And that ball, it has a lot oftopspin on it.
And so once it gets intoKelvin's mouth, it either
catches the roof of his mouth orhis tongue and it spins back
into his throat.
And everyone can see the lookof panic in his eyes because
there's now a ping pong ballthat's lodged in his throat.
And he drops his paddle andhe's waving his arms and he's

(04:00):
freaking out.
And someone runs up and isabout to do the Heimlich
maneuver.
But before that's necessary,Kelvin is able to take a deep
breath through his nose andcough the ping pong ball back
out onto the floor.
The bar is totally silent.
and everyone is staring atStephen.
He drops his paddle on theground and walks out the front

(04:21):
door.
Nobody went after him.
There was a lot of discussionabout whether anybody knew him
or not, but nobody had ever seenhim at Mar-Mar's before,
including Kelvin.
And no one ever saw him thereagain.
And the same goes for Kelvin.
He kept playing table tennis atother places, but he never came
back to Mar-Mar's.
And he was different afterthat.

(04:43):
He wasn't as cocky.
He didn't play with his shoeanymore.
He'd give up his turn after hewon just a few games in a row.
That night seemed to changehim.
The events of that night becameknown as the Steven Seagal
incident, because his name wasSteven S., they didn't know his
last name, and he almost killedsomeone with a It sounded like

(05:04):
something Steven Seagal may doin one of his movies.
Jeremiah picked up Stephen'spaddle.
The handle was normal, but theactual paddle part was an upside
down trapezoid, obviouslyhomemade.
And actually at Mar-Mar's, theynailed it to the wall for a
little while, but someone stoleit eventually.
Jeremiah kept going toMar-Mar's and he started going

(05:26):
to some other table tennisnights.
And he started this side hustleof selling people ping pong
paddles because new people wouldcome along all the time.
They'd want to paddle andpaddles can actually be really
So he would go around to garagesales and things like that and
look for them.
And he had this hugecollection.
And when a new person came andstarted playing ping pong, be

(05:48):
like, hey, look at these paddlesI have.
Do you want to buy one?
Several years after the StevenSeagal incident.
Jeremiah gets a call from afriend.
They're at a garage sale andthis house has like 50 ping pong
paddles for sale.
Jeremiah hops in his car andgets over there as fast as he
can.
The first thing he notices isthat several of the paddles are

(06:10):
homemade and they're that sameupside down trapezoid as Stephen
S's paddle.
And the person manning thetable is not Stephen S, it's a
woman.
He asks her where she got thepaddles and she said they were
her husband's who had died dieda couple years ago.
And Jeremiah asks, was yourhusband's name Stephen?
And she says, yes.

(06:31):
Did you know him?
He tells her that he had seenhim play table tennis before.
She smiled a sort of wry smileand said he was obsessed.
And Jeremiah didn't want toreally push it further, but he
said, I want to buy all of thesepaddles, every single one.
There are like 50 there.
And she was like, really?
And then she said, I have someother things in our cross space.

(06:53):
He had like a ping pong area.
If you want to look at any ofthat, I didn't even think to
bring it out, but there's sometables back there and other
things.
And Jeremiah's like, sure.
So they go into this crawlspace under their house.
The floor is gravel, but theceilings are high enough so you
can stand up and walk around inthere.
And there's some ping pongtables.
One is set up, and then there'ssome that are not set up.

(07:15):
And then there's a workbench,and it looks like that's where
Stephen was making his paddles.
But the thing that really stoodout to Jeremiah was the table
that was set up.
It was pushed up against thiscinder block wall.
So you could stand on one side,it looked like you could hit
shots, and then it would hit thewall and they'd come back to

(07:37):
you.
So you could practice byyourself.
And on that cinder block wallthat you'd be hitting into if
you were practicing, there wereseveral little hand-painted
targets, each of them about thesize of a tennis ball, maybe a
little bigger, and they were allabout head high.
And each time a ping pong ballhad hit them when Stephen was
practicing, it made a littlemark.
I don't know if it was fromdust or if it was from paint,

(07:57):
coming off the target, but youcould see the targets had been
pelted time and time again,probably with thousands of shots
as Stephen practiced in hisbasement.
And that's the moment thatJeremiah finally saw the truth
of those events all those yearsago.
Up to that point, Jeremiah hadconvinced himself that maybe it
was just bad luck.
But no, here it was right infront of him.

(08:19):
Stephen S.
had practiced hitting shotsthousands and thousands of times
at targets that were face high.
When he stepped step up to playKelvin that night, his plan was
to go for his head.
The only question that remainsis why?
Was this some sort of newplaying style that he was trying
to create to throw hisopponents off?
And then the fluke was that theball went into Kelvin's mouth?

(08:41):
Or was he actually trying tohit the ball into Kelvin's mouth
and hurt him?
Jeremiah didn't have the heartto bring this up with Stephen's
wife, which I totallyunderstand.
But he really wanted to talk toKelvin about it because if
Stephen was going after Kelvin,there had to be some personal
reason behind it, and maybeKelvin had just pretended not to
know him.
And so Jeremiah started askingaround about Kelvin, and then he

(09:04):
learned that, unfortunately,Kelvin had also passed away.
And so, we don't have ananswer.
And we never will.
Rob Tells Tales is produced byme, Rob Tiffin.
Our theme music is by MitchellHardage.
Our cover art is by MarcellaJohnson.

(09:27):
She also came up with the titleof the podcast.
Thanks to everyone who talksthrough these episodes with me
before I record them.
There are too many to list.
And thanks to you forlistening.