No More Air Hockey at MOA! Hawkman Rehab Tales...

Guest post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, photos by John Hoff

Ever since my tragic incident with the Dumpinator 3000, I've been rehabbing in various ways, including honing my reflexes at air hockey and hooping. Don't ask me why these two activities have been helpful; but my VA rep says unconventional learning has been proven successful elsewhere.

Some of this has proven useful. I recently hula-hooped long enough to earn a discounted haircut. (Really. This is one of the few parts that is NOT a parody.) Air hockey on the other hand, has been problematic...

During my therapy, I challenged John's son Alex to air hockey. I'd grown up playing the game and I consider myself to be rather good. I've also volunteered with kids from my church, and in my eight years of that, only one youth has ever beaten me. So even hampered by phone book injuries, I thought this would be another easy step towards recovery.

Boy was I wrong. I don't remember the score, but Alex SCHOOLED me. We're talking a "take me out behind the woodshed with the business end of a belt" kind of whooping. This wasn't even CLOSE.

(What surprises me even more, is that for some reason, John has failed to blog about this incident. He's normally pretty quick to point out when Alex is superior to his superiors at things. But I've looked and looked and the blog post just isn't there.)

So we returned to the mall ready for a rematch, and what happened? The air hockey table is GONE! Alex and I took out our mutual frustrations while playing this game. We did well enough to consistently score in the top ten, but there was no clear winner between us regarding ability or score. And what fun is there if you can't divide people up into winners and losers?

A rematch and more news about the Hawkman's recovery are coming soon...