I rubbed my hands together with glee as I stepped into my newly-renovated games room, throwing my arms up as I got to my newest purchase.
‘Ta-da!’ I cried out.
‘Dad, you don’t have to yell, we’re all right here with you.’ My eldest daughter rolled her eyes, while somehow still managing to keep them glued to her phone.
‘Come on, isn’t this exciting?’ I asked, looking hopefully at my son, my youngest daughter and my wife for support. The children looked more confused than anything, and my wife was actively frowning.
‘What did you do?’ she asked, annoyance seeping into her tone. ‘We don’t have room for a new table tennis table – Australia would run out of room if you were in charge of it!’
‘The whole continent?’ I asked, perplexed.
‘It was a metaphor,’ she said, clearly wishing she could tack an insult onto the end of the sentence. A quick glance at our three children was all that spared me.
‘Oh come on!’ I laughed. ‘Look at it! Look at how much fun we could have in here! Just a few hours of practice a day and you’ll be better at table tennis than anyone else you ever meet!’
‘Why would I want to be better than everybody else?’ my youngest daughter asked, still aggressively cute. ‘Wouldn’t that make them feel bad?’
I sighed, all of the energy flowing out of my body with a single slump of my shoulders. ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I knew I should have just bought that home gym equipment online like Gary said…’
My wife gestured with her head and the children ran gratefully out of the room, off to their social media and video games. She walked over to me with an understanding expression, slipping her arm around my waist supportively.
‘Idiot,’ she said, after a moment. ‘That’s what I was going to call you if the kids weren’t here. Now get that thing out of our house.’