Stuck at the Kids’ Table, and Glad of It

I wonder if I will ever be excused from the Thanksgiving “kids’ table.”

At the age of 24, it feels as if I have been sentenced to a generational infinite-loop that consigns me to this spot until I am 40--at least.

Several years ago, some relative surveyed our growing clan--about 25 people usually gather for this November ritual--slammed down the spatula like a gavel and ordered the children of my family to be put in exile. We had outgrown the dining room table, so the kids were shipped off to a sort of Alcatraz Island located in the middle of the hallway of my grandparents’ Michigan home.

The grown-ups got mahogany; the children got a card table topped with plastic. Today, although many of the “children” are in their 20s, they remain in that hallway.

The adults claim it was a mutually agreed-upon move. “The kids didn’t want to sit with the adults,” my mom insists. “It was your choice. You wanted to talk over your own things and be at your own table.”

I don’t remember it that way. And I figure I will break free of the food-fighting anarchy of the kids’ table only when I have children of my own to exile. Even if there is a death or illness in the family, several older cousins stand in my way for a shot at the big time.

Being at the kids’ table is like playing second-string on a sports team, like being an understudy to the lead role you won’t get to perform until the whole cast changes.

It’s also disgusting.

At some point during the meal, my 27-year-old cousin, Mary, usually sticks a leftover piece of ham fat up her nose, and it dangles across her cheek while she chats. The children of my brothers, sisters and cousins throw buttered peas at each other.

At the adults’ table, there are real napkins, matching china place settings, crystal goblets, several sets of salt and pepper shakers, and butter dishes. The kids’ table has a tub of margarine, a crepe-paper turkey for the centerpiece and a bowl of cranberry sauce.

Naturally, the food is placed on the adults’ table. Those of us who sit at the kids’ table have to circle around our relatives like vultures, making a sweeping dive over some uncle’s shoulder for the dish we want while it’s still half-full.

But we’ve developed some coping mechanisms to deal with the absence of food at our table. For example, if one of us gets up for seconds, we grab whatever is left on his or her plate. My 29-year-old brother, John, explains it best, since he discovered the move: “The scam is, whoever gets up, you rip off their food. You give them your cranberry sauce and you take their roll.”

We also depend on the position of food courier, for which my sister Kate, 20, is often tapped. Being the youngest of the first cousins in my generation, she has little recourse when, as she gets up for second helpings, one of her brothers yells: “Hey, Skate, bring me some more turkey!”

To which my cousin Dave, 29, adds: “Yeah, and get some stuffing while you’re at it.”

“And snag some rolls,” adds my 23-year-old cousin, Steve, who is then echoed by my 27-year-old brother, Dan, and my 31-year-old cousin, Mark.

“Yo, Katie-baby, grab me some more mashed potatoes, OK?” cousin Scott, 26, interrupts.

And finally, I ask my sister: “Hey, get me just a little bit of turkey, but I only like the white kind, but make sure it’s from the center, where it’s not so dry and flaky, got it? Not the flaky part, OK? Hear me?”

One way to escape the food-courier duty is to sit in one of the vicious, slat-toothed, wooden snapping seats because rising from one of them takes balance and agility and shouldn’t be done unless it is absolutely essential. These cantankerous folding chairs are kept in basements and dragged out only for Thanksgiving, when the dining room’s plush, user-friendly oak chairs are all taken by . . . the adults.

There is a certain envy, an irritating curiousity, about what they are talking about over at the big table. In our family, the kids’ table is placed in a tantalizing position that puts us just out of reach of food and just within hearing distance of our parents, so only snatches of my father’s voice float over to me: “Sue Ellen . . . speeding ticket . . . 20 m.p.h. zone . . . something about a hair appointment. . . .”

“I think it’s strangely ironic that I could be sitting within 10 feet from the very people who are talking about me and yet not be able to participate in the discussion to defend myself,” Dan says.

But not everyone regards the kids’ table with disdain.

Some adult always comes to “check on us” every so often during dinner, on the pretense of making sure we have enough food. But my mother admitted to me once that she drops in “to see if there is any fun conversation . . . to vicariously be a part of it.”

My Aunt Gail says: “Maybe we ought to draw names, because I don’t like all the adults at one table. I kind of think the kids are more fun than the adults sometimes.”

Therein lies the paradox of the kids’ table: The adults want to be where we are, and we want to be where they are.

Life at the kids’ table has its benefits. There, you can talk with your mouth full, hide your peas in your sweet potatoes and triple-up on desserts. At the kids’ table, we skip any form of serious conversation and cut straight to stupid jokes and what team the Detroit Lions are losing to this holiday.

I wonder, at times, if I’m not better off where I am in the Thanksgiving pecking order, because at our private card-table island, we kids can reign. We make the rules. We set the agenda for who eats when, how much and even how they eat.

Plus, if you get paroled from the kids’ table, it’s not an easy transition to the civilized world. John discovered this when he moved up the big table. Although he graduated from college in 1984, aunts and uncles kept turning to him and asking: “So, how are your exams going?”

As the day of liberation from the hallway table nears, a certain worry arises in a kid. He takes on strange habits, such as chewing his food 25 times before swallowing.

My newly married cousin Mary is getting promoted this year. Seeing the things she’s having to do--dressing up in heels and all--just to integrate into the big table society make me actually relieved I am still at the kids’ table.

“I think I’ll put up a fight to be at the kids’ table,” said Mary, anticipating her impending transfer with regret.

Poor kid, she’s got to be an adult this year.