Title: Beer Pong

General Information about Item:

• Type of Lore: Drinking Game
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: America (Texas)
• Informant: Anonymous
• Date Collected: May 14, 2019

Informant Data:

• The anonymous informant was a visiting professor in the Dartmouth Math department. She was born in Mexico City and currently lives in Hanover, NH. She spent her undergraduate years at the University of Texas, Pan American, where she learned this drinking game.

Contextual Data:

• The informant went to a relatively typical American college – with many students going out to parties on the weekends at fraternities. It was at one of the fraternity parties, during her Junior year of college and University of Texas, that the informant observed this game.

Item:

• “So you have to set up some cups, right, on each side of the table, and then you have like a ping pong ball. And you just have to throw it [at the cups in front of the other person]. And if it falls into the cup, the person on the other side of the table has to drink it. And if it doesn’t [make it into a cup], then you have to drink on your side.”

Informant’s Comments:

• • “I mean, in my in my opinion it wasn’t so fun because unless you’re very good at aiming –  and then it’s fun because you see the other person getting drunk while you’re pretty awake right… [or else, you end up just drinking a lot]…. I think it’s a it’s a fair game though, rather than just drink for no reason, [it gives you a reason for drinking].“

Collector’s Comments:

• This variant of pong is interesting, because unlike traditional pong where you only drink if your opponent gets their ball in your cup, in this variant, you also have to drink if you miss a cup. This seems to lead to an accelerated rate of drinking (and perhaps the reason our informant wasn’t a huge fan of this game).

Collector’s Name: Michael Steel

Tags/Keywords:

• Ritual. Drinking Game. Beer Pong.