The Adult Table

Photographer Justin Hackworth sends out a photo of the day. (Sign up here to be added to the list). Yesterday there was a photo of the adult table at Thanksgiving. Oh, the adult table. As a kid, I really wanted to sit there. Over there they talked about business, and politics, and the neighbors. Why couldn’t the kids sit with the adults anyway?

 

Both of my grandmothers would set “kid” and “adult” tables when they hosted Thanksgiving. There was one Thanksgiving, however, when my grandma Webster didn’t just set a kid table, she served kid food. At Thanksgiving.

 

I love Thanksgiving. Always have. I love the turkey. I love the dressing. I love mashed potatoes and yams. I love everything about Thanksgiving, but I especially love the food. As a child, even, I loved the food. I looked forward to Thanksgiving all year.

 

That year, we went to Grandma Webster’s. We kids all sat down at the kid table. Grandma served us chicken nuggets. What???? Chicken nuggets. I hated chicken nuggets. She had to be kidding. She wasn’t. In fact, she was excited that she’d thought of it. Kids don’t like grown up food. They don’t want turkey. They want chicken nuggets. I didn’t. I wanted turkey. Can I have turkey? No. You can have chicken nuggets. That’s what kids like: chicken nuggets. No sense wasting a turkey on children who don’t even like it. But I like turkey. I do. But I made chicken nuggets for the kids. If you’re at the kid table, you eat chicken nuggets. So I did. And I really, really wanted to be sitting at the adult table. Not just for the gossip and politics, but for the turkey.

 

After our chicken nugget dinner we had mincemeat pie, because all kids love mincemeat pie.