"In vacant or in pensive mood..." I am: Bekah; 24; Law Student / Favorite Things: Carbs (so there!), Johnny Damon, Smiling at babies, Grilled cheese, Comfortable silence / Favorite Supreme Court Justice: Brennan / Favorite Wilson: Owen by an inch / Today's Special: Song: Elliott Smith, "Bled White"; Quote: "You know, there's like a butt-load of gangs at this school. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bowstaff." Please love me: mmbekah@yahoo.com


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The Politics of the Grownup Table

At large family gatherings, there usually isn’t enough room for everyone at the main dining table. To compensate for the missing seats, the adults set up a “kids’ table”: some sort of foldable number like a card table or a playskool carpenter’s bench. Around the kids’ table are the folding lawn chairs, the bathroom stepstool, and the living room ottoman. Underneath the kids’ table is a makeshift tarp of some kind, perhaps a garbage bag. The top of the kids’ table is littered with any combination of the following: gallons of grape juice (hence, the tarp), sippy-cups, Snoopy plates, diced carrots, mushed up Matzo balls sans broth, a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, and/or fluff.

The adults’ motivation for the kids’ table is clear. No one wants a five-year-old knocking back Manishevitz anywhere near grandma’s thousand-year-old tablecloth. But I think the kids’ table/grownup table partition causes some serious developmental issues. Issues that vex me to this day. The pivotal question is:

At what point does one get promoted to the grownup table?

As a kid, you’re psyched about the kids’ table. You don’t have to sit with your mom, and you can get away with not eating the broccoli without causing a scene. But then the fun is over. When you reach the age of thirteen or fourteen, adolescent discontent makes you resent being placed at the kids’ table. You spend these formative years trying to dissociate yourself from children, and then Passover comes and brutally shoots you back to childhood. So you sit at the kids’ table and fight with your sister about who gets the Snoopy plate.

By the time you’re in high school, you are actually offended when seated at the kids’ table. You have a blowout with your mother about how no one respects you and you’re always treated like a child. And then you sit silently at the grownup table, listening to discussions you don’t understand about leftist politics or something interesting your uncle read in Scientific American. And you yearn for the Snoopy plate.

In college, you come home and end up volunteering to supervise the kids’ table, because, frankly, you feel grownup enough. But you still feel slightly miffed at the idea, and your ears perk up when you hear the discussion about the new exhibit at the Met. You want to participate in the conversation so everyone can hear what you learned in Art History 101.

Now that I’m in law school, I’m more confused than ever about where I belong. My grandmother invited me to dinner a few days ago and explained that it was just going to be my aunt and uncle and me: “just us adults,” she said. But this only confirmed my suspicions. It was as if she wanted to assure me that I am now worthy of the grownup table. It was too forced. When I truly belong at the grownup table, that fact will go without saying. And so, I remain in perpetual limbo. At this point, I think getting married might be the only way to break through the grownup table force field. Or maybe I should just settle this once and for all by having kids and making my own kids' table. No one can expect me to sit there!
posted by Bekah at 9:24 AM :: |