Today, for no great reason, I feel like ruminating on “The Kids’ Table”. This of course is the table that is designated for all the younger generation during meals involving extended family or friends.
The Adults’ Table is generally the largest and longest table used for group gatherings, and sometimes made of several smaller tables, such as folding tables, fitted end to end to create one long table as if in a Great Hall. This table has the best tablecloths and furnishings, and is where all the best dishes reside once the food is served. All the chairs for the dinner table, and any appropriate good chairs from around the house proper are brought to encircle this table.
The Kids’ Table is a smaller affair, often with a picnic-style tablecloth that can be wiped (or hosed) off when necessary as the meal progresses, or no tablecloth at all, just the bare top making it all the easier to wipe up drops, spills, and such. It may have chairs of any type, most often not matching and generally including the folding chairs from the closet or attic as the good chairs that would normally go with the table have been commandeered by the adults. Benches are also a possibility at this table, as you can fit more wriggling giggling kids on a bench than on individual chairs around the table.
The Kids’ Table belongs to all those who count themselves children, or who are still deemed to be children by the adults, who send a child to the aforementioned table when he attempts to sneak a seat at the larger table. This sneaking, while bold, is not terribly well thought out, since a child in most respects does not at all resemble an adult, and the parents of the child are almost sure to among the adult company and will call out the little truant from where he sits and send them back to the company of his own generation. Also, at the Adults’ Table there is rather defined seating, with couples paired up side by side or across from each other. This makes it difficult for a child to sneak in as the seats have most likely already been claimed by the time a child thinks of sitting down to eat. More often, the kids are herded to their table when the adults have decided it is time to do so, and they were happily ignorant of the time or the necessity of having dinner be more than the appetizers set about on trays and in little dishes around the house. There is no distinction of seating at the Kids’ Table, such as all from one direct family sitting together. Sisters, brothers, cousins, friends, and the neighbor kid from down the street all pile around this table in a general disorder, with seating going on a catch-as-catch-can arrangement and frequently changing throughout the meal.
The Kids’ Table has always been my preference, as adult conversation rarely proves to be as enjoyable as the giggling and play of the Kids’ Table. We overgrown kids had held that table for quite a while too, well into our twenties, and the eldest of us into our early thirties, as there was not another generation below us yet to push us up into the Adult status. It was easy to justify staying at the Kids’ Table, since the family has been lucky enough to retain almost all of its adult members. Those few who were lost to separation, distance, or the march of mortality were replaced by adult guests or adult additions to the family by way of marriage. Allowing guests and newcomers to sit with the adults was only proper and polite of course, and quite agreeable still to all the over-age “children” who preferred to stay and giggle with their childhood table comrades.
It is finally time for my generation to begin moving out of the Kids’ Table for earnest though. Several of the “kids” now have children of their own. A few of these children are even of an age to be able to sit at a table by themselves and be trusted with food and utensils, and the rest seem to be racing Time and each other to see who can grow up the fastest and obtain a treasured place at the Kids’ Table. There is nothing more sobering to a generation of once-children than seeing another generation of their own creation usurp the long-held place they had come to know. Ah well, Time marches on, and every generation must take its place in the line of Adults sooner or later. The only trouble now is that the Adult table will need another leaf or two added to hold all of our newly displaced members.
