The Maui Classic

Thanksgiving for my family is a little bit different than most peoples thanksgivings. My family has two thanksgivings. One with my mom’s side of the family and one with my dad’s side of the family. The two thanksgiving dinners are complete opposites of each other. My mom’s sides dinner is the stereotypical “perfect” thanksgiving dinner. My mom’s mom and dad live on a big farm with rolling hills and beautiful trees. My grandma is a great cook and during dinner we all sit around a big table and share stories and laugh. It’s a nice Thanksgiving dinner, but not that interesting. Thanksgiving with my dad’s side of the family is definitely not the stereotypical “perfect” Thanksgiving. We have the dinner at my house and my dad’s sister and her son come over and my uncle drives done from Danville, IL with my grandma. We have a good dinner, but after dinner is when the festivities really begin.

Three years ago my brother, cousin, and I began a tradition of putting on a ping pong tournament after Thanksgiving dinner. Surprisingly, when we pitched the idea of a ping pong tournament to the rest of the family, they were on board. When we got the green light, we started to create a bracket and put everything in place. My uncle came up with a name that really got everyone excited about the tournament, “The Maui Classic”. He came up with this title because we had been watching the Maui Invitational, which is a basketball tournament held around Thanksgiving time. With the name of the tournament in place, we began our first tournament. It went pretty well, but there were a few kinks in the system considering it was our first tournament. My brother ended up being the champion, which put a damper on the whole thing in my opinion.

The next year there was a lot of pressure to put on a better tournament. My brother and I started to sort out the details embarrassingly early, like two months in advance. We got the idea to create trailer for the tournament to get everyone excited about it. This trailer was my first go at iMovie so it’s not a very high quality video, but I was really proud of it at the time. When Thanksgiving arrived, our family was more excited about the Maui Classic than they were about Thanksgiving dinner. My uncle brought tropical shorts as his “uniform” and I brought out all of our tropical themed clothing. I even made the bracket for the tournament on poster board paper and decorated it with a hibiscus flower.

We quickly ate dinner and then it was tournament time. The games commenced and I was feeling pretty good about my chances. As I eyed up my competition, I saw that my only real threats were my dad and my brother. I ended up making it to the championship round, where I would have to go up against my dad. My dad could put a killer spin on the ball, but his weakness was his deteriorating eyesight which caused him to have impaired depth perception. My game plan was to play a defensive game and cause him to make the mistakes. Once the championship game began, my game plan fell perfectly into place. I was able to return almost all of his hits and once I started to gain the lead, I began to take advantage of his weaknesses. I won the the match and was named the Maui Classic champion. I received the golden paddle (a ping pong paddle spray painted gold) and was on cloud nine. That Thanksgiving will probably do down as one of my fondest memories in Miles Family history.

I realize this sounds like a pretty funny way to spend Thanksgiving night, but I look forward to this silly little family tradition all year. I’ve had the “perfect” family Thanksgiving, but I barely remember those Thanksgiving dinners because they all kind of blend together, but the Thanksgivings I remember the most are those when I make meaningful memories, even if those memories are of a silly ping pong tournament that my family takes way too seriously.