Opinion | Why I finally gave away our air hockey table this Christmas

July 18, 2024

There were plenty of gifts in our house this Hanukkah and Christmas (our family does both), but the present I keep thinking about is the one we gave away.

I finally had to let the air hockey table go.

If you grew up in a certain era in suburban America, surrounded by Fonzie posters and cassette tapes, when basements were way more likely to have shag carpets than stadium seats, then you probably understand the mystique of the air hockey table. It was an aspirational part of childhood — attained by few, coveted by all.

You knew you were never going to own the model at the bowling alley, which was seemingly the size of a small boat and ran on a motor more powerful than your neighbor’s Chevette. The home version was slower and lighter, and if you hit the puck too hard it might fly off the table and cause grievous harm to someone you loved. It was a chance you had to take.

Ping-pong and pool tables were more for grown-ups. Foosball got boring after 10 minutes. Air hockey stood alone.

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I didn’t want for much in childhood, but that table was never a possibility. We didn’t have a finished basement, and it was never going to supplant my mother’s piano. I decided my son and daughter, however, would not be deprived. We did have a basement, and Wayne Gretzky as my witness, that basement was going to have air hockey.

There’s an entire industry devoted to indulging this nostalgia. You can find dozens of air hockey tables online, from cheaply made tabletop versions to models that approach commercial grade, which can run you a thousand bucks or more.

Let’s just say I landed closer to that end of the spectrum.

I guess I knew right away that the air hockey table was destined to become the world’s most expensive holder of discarded sweatshirts. For weeks before its unveiling five or six Christmases ago, it sat fully assembled in the basement, its unmistakable outline pathetically shrouded by a bed sheet, and neither of the kids even noticed it.

They sometimes played with it during sleepovers, and on those occasions I would hear the whack-whack downstairs, rising above the comforting hum of the motor, and I would think to myself: Yes. This is what childhood should be.

But to them, air hockey was simply a toy, no better or worse than the plastic roller-coaster it replaced, and way lower-tech than the Xbox. It occupied no exotic locale in their imaginations.

Looking back now, it seems obvious to me that my childhood dream wasn’t so much about air hockey as it was about companionship. My dad was always working, my mom was running a household, my two older sisters were uninterested in baseball or superheroes. I spent a lot of time hanging out alone, sorting baseball cards or reading or making stuff up.

What the air hockey table represented was a tandem activity that no one could possibly resist. It was an “if you build it, they will come” sort of thing. Somehow, if I had one in my house, I would never be lonely again.

But, of course, my kids have never known isolation. Theirs is a world of instant and constant connection — FaceTime and Discord, Minecraft and Fortnite. Even alone in their rooms, they’re never really by themselves. One always has to assume, upon entering, that an unseen audience lurks.

Our kids are fortunate in this way — I know there are children who grow up in this virtual world but find themselves excluded by their peers, for whatever reason, and I think of what it must be like for their parents. But I also wonder whether there isn’t some value in having to live inside yourself for long parts of the day, steadily honing invaluable skills of imagination and self-reliance, dreaming of heroic pursuits. Or maybe of air hockey.

I find myself worrying: When you’re so seldom lonely, how do you learn to be alone? Is it reasonable for me to hope they never have to find out?

This Christmas, we bought some new exercise equipment for the basement, and I finally admitted that the air hockey table had to go. We offered it to some friends with younger children, and on Christmas Eve I watched them haul away the air hockey table I had always wanted.

I won’t miss it. These days, my wife or my kids are always up for a game of eight-ball or some hoops. All I have to do is go online.

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