The idea, as explained to me by the 16-year-old, was this: We buy a pingpong table for some serious father-and-son bonding and when that goes south - say, about 10 minutes later - he and his friends can play.

Fine. Anything for the youth of America.

So we drive to the nearest mammoth sporting goods store and pick out a nifty mid-priced model. Naturally, it comes in a box that weighs as much as an elephant and has to be assembled.

"Is it easy to put together?" I ask the sales guy.

"Sure," he replies. "How hard can it be?"

Right.

The kid and I wrestle the box into the minivan.

What follows is a chronicle of the assembly process, as best as can be recollected.

11 a.m.: Assembly begins in the family room. We rip open the box and pull out two huge table halfs, U-legs, U-clips, U-supports, L-tubes, side rails, end rails, side panels, 2-inch casters, leg caps, corner caps.

We pull out a plastic bag with so many screws, nuts and bolts you'd think we were building an Apache helicopter.

There's a reason things like pingpong tables, gas grills and the like come in smaller boxes these days - because they're in about 300 pieces.

11:07: Uh-oh. Just found the owner's manual. It's thicker than Donald Trump's prenuptial agreement. Ten pages of assembly instructions. Dozens of illustrations - Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. - that would paralyze a mechanical engineer.

There's an entire page devoted to securing the net on the net posts. This could be trouble.

12:40 p.m.: Progress is maddeningly slow. I'm twitching like Roger Clemens at a polygraph test. We have the legs secured to one of the table halfs and are working on the rails. But that's all we've done.

Part of the problem is our tools. The Phillips screwdriver is gnarled and keeps stripping the screws. The adjustable wrench looks like something Henry Ford used on his Model T.

Yep, I'm not Mr. Tool Guy in the neighborhood, that's for sure.

1:30: The 16-year-old announces he needs a break. He's starting to lose it mentally. And he's the handy one. Me, I can barely work a shower curtain.

2:05: The kid is back! Fortified by a run to Subway and a chicken sandwich piled three stories high with pickles and lettuce, he seems almost chipper.

He takes to our task again with renewed optimism. So do I.

2:55: Well, that didn't last long. I'm hot, sweaty and cursing like Dick Cheney after three martinis. The kid's spirits are sinking fast, too.

Here's why: the instructions call for 3/4 -inch screws to secure the legs to the second table half. Except the 3/4 -inch screws don't fit in the pre-drilled holes. Only the 1/4 -inch screws fit.

Oh, the hell with it: We use the 1/4 -inch screws.

Look, we're at the end of our ropes, here.

If this thing collapses like a card table when you breathe on it, that's the way it goes.

3:22: The 16-year-old's friend stops by. He thinks he's here to play video games. But we hand him a screwdriver and a wrench and immediately press him into service tightening all the hardware.

"You've got the rest of your life to play video games," I tell him. "But how often do you get to be a part of something this exciting?"

At one point, he complains that some screws don't seem to be tightening. I could explain the whole 3/4 -inch screw vs. 1/4 -inch screw issue, but why bother?

Besides, if the table collapses now, we can always blame him.

4:09: We're on Step 193, or whatever. And judging by the assembly instructions, we should be almost finished.

The casters are attached to the legs. The legs are fastened to the table tops. The table tops are secured to the table base.

But we have about 35 screws and bolts left over. Paranoia rages. Did we do something wrong? Did we miss a few steps? Or are these just extras?

But that doesn't make sense, does it? When they finished building the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, did they hand state transportation officials a bag of screws and bolts and say: "Here, these are leftovers"?

4:46: That's it, our long national nightmare is over. The table is up and ready for business. The net is secured. We break out the paddles and a ball.

But we're too frazzled and exhausted to play.

Maybe we'll get a game in tomorrow - if the table is still standing.

kevin.cowherd@baltsun.com