The Kiddie Table

Bill Melendez Prod., Charles M. Schultz

Every Thanksgiving dinner brings to mind the iconic status symbol of the real difference between generations. The ultimate measuring stick of the vertically impaired. The true distance between childhood and adulthood.  Yes, I'm talking about the "Kiddie Table." I have fond memories of the Kiddie Table. As children, every holiday my sister and cousins and I were relegated not just to another table, but to a whole different room, separated from the adults.  We were allowed to dip from the adult buffet table (pronounced "Boo Fay" by my family) but then were shooed into "our place" as soon as our plates were filled. And we knew our place. If one of us strayed into the grownup room and took a seat, the rest of us would immediately sense the infraction and scurry to correct the insubordination. New additions (adopted) or visiting cousins were given the shakedown by us older cousins and shown their empty spot at the card table. YOUR chair folds up, don't forget that. The grown up table was for serious conversations like, who was getting a kitchen remodeled or how much one could expect to pay for a used lawn mower at a garage sale. That was fine by us. The Kiddie Table was OUR area. We told gross jokes, mixed all our food up in one cup to create the Ultimate Most Disgusting Thanksgiving Meal Ever and then tried to talk the younger cousins into tasting it. We hid terrible things in mashed potatoes, dropped cranberry sauce into glasses of Coca-Cola when one of them went to the restroom, and excelled at quickly reverting to the the Model Minority - we were trained to be - whenever an adult wandered into our sacred domain. It was a mini hierarchy of sorts, with us older cousins acting as babysitters; some shaking their heads at the juvenile behavior of the others, some participating.  Me, I was right in the thick of it, usually recommending what prank to play and then leading the charge against the uninitiated.  I know you're shocked. I think of those days with great fondness, when we didn't even have to worry about cleaning up, much less preparing the mountains of food that magically appeared every holiday.  After dinner, we'd scatter to play tag or Fruit Basket Turnover, which I just found out is an Asian game (who knew? I guess I'm oblivious; I still don't get Chinese Fire Drills). The grownups retreated into their requisite gender-specific corners: men in front of the television, women in the kitchen to clean up (that's another blog rant). Those were days unencumbered by scary news stories or those pesky government safety warnings. We burned leaves in ditches and leaped through the smoke, set off bottle rockets in the city, biked alone where ever we wanted and spent many summer hours on our stomachs dipping styrofoam cups into sludgy ditch water for tadpoles. Those were our Wonder Years, forever gone. Would I ever have let my son do any of those things when he was my age? Are you kidding? As an only child, I didn't let him light a match until he was ten, and he sure as heck never sat at a Kiddie Table. I'm glad for the extra safety precautions, I suppose.  But sometimes I mourn the fact that he never got to experience the pure, joyful satisfaction of watching your younger cousin swill his glass of Dr Pepper, completely unaware of the nasty Brussels sprout waiting for him at the bottom.  Ahhh. Eventually, we all graduated to the Grownup Table and, sadly, to all the work that came along with it.  Had I known that, I would have stayed at the Kiddie Table forever (here Tristan would say, "well, you still fit!"), still wondering in blissful ignorance where all that food came from. No wonder they called it The Wonder Years.