Growing up, family dinners were a bit of a social experiment. The grown-ups always congregated around the fancy dining room table, while we kids were exiled to the living room, relegated to a rickety card table surrounded by mismatched folding chairs and the odd piece of furniture from my grandparents’ collection. All the delicious food and drinks? They were at the grown-up table, of course. Our parents would dutifully load our plates and deliver them to us in our distant kingdom of kid-dom.
Now, let me tell you, when we were at the kids’ table, we were expected to be the model of decorum. We had to sit still, be quiet, and if we needed anything, we had to call out to our parents. Approaching the grown-up table? Unthinkable! If we dared to venture close, the lively conversation would come to a screeching halt, and one of our parents would swoop in, discover our desperate needs, and promptly send us back to our domain. My sister and I often shared the kids’ table with our cousins, who were mostly boys and not exactly known for their riveting dinner conversation. They were usually too busy demolishing their food, leaving us staring at the tops of their heads. Even if they had been chatty, it wouldn’t have mattered; I was fixated on one thing: sitting at the grown-up table.
To me, the grown-up table was the epicenter of excitement. We could hear the laughter, whispers, and the clinking of glasses. It was where all the action was happening! Grown-ups commanded respect, and they had the inside scoop on everything. Most importantly, they told the best jokes and shared the juiciest stories. I remember pestering my parents about when I would earn my spot at the grown-up table. My mom told me she didn’t get to sit there until she got married. Well, that wasn’t going to work for me. My grand plan involved living in a cozy beach house with a hundred cats and becoming “independently wealthy.” So, how on earth was I going to level up to grown-up status?
As time went on, my cousins and I grew taller, and our parents grew a bit lazy about setting up the card table—or maybe they finally figured out how to extend the dining room table. Either way, we eventually graduated to the grown-up table, but the feeling of being an outsider never fully faded. That sense of missing out on all the “real” conversations lingered.
Fast forward to today, and as I write, I can’t help but remember that longing. I strive to honor young readers with the respect and honesty they deserve, pouring my best stories into my writing—especially the darkly funny ones, because let’s be real, those were the tales I loved to overhear.
Unfortunately, for those young ones out there, sitting at the kids’ table is a rite of passage. But while they’re there, I’ll pull up a folding chair and share a few secrets, including this one: the grown-up table can get boring pretty quickly. And so do we all.
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