How to run a proper Thanksgiving 'kid's table.' Rule One:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

Rule One: It's for the kids. If the kids are old enough to feed themselves, they don't need a bunch of the adults there to chaparone. Adults should sit with the other adults until things get 'too quiet' or the smoke alarm goes off.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Rule Two: If the kids keep wandering back to the adult table...

...you're not using the right kind of knots.

[idgiehkt]

12. lol

good call.

:rofl:

[Redstone]

2. You betcha. If nobody's bleeding, everything is fine. Worked out very well

for us today; kids and parents, everybody was happy.

Of course, it may have helped that the kids' table was in the basement this year.

Redstone

[Gidney N Cloyd]

3. Basement's good. Neighbor's house is even better.

[Redstone]

6. Especially ours. Our next-door neighbor is a stone drunk, so the kids could have

done pretty much anything short of burning the place down, and it would have been fine with her.

I'll remember that for next year, thanks for the suggestion.

Redstone

[Gidney N Cloyd]

4. Rule Three: Explain the '5-second rule' to the kids.

Makes for easier cleanup after dinner.

[texanwitch]

5. I hated the kids table.

There were four of us. My three cousins were pigs, throwing food, kicking the table, even knocking the table over.

I refused to eat with them, and I was the troublemaker.

As soon I got old enough I stopped going to my Grandparents house, and that was when I 13 years old.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. Perfect example of a poorly run Kids Table. Prior to your emancipation...

...you should have been able to slip out, hitch a ride with a stranger, eat at McDonalds, hitch back, and slip back in with no adult the wiser.

[idgiehkt]

13. you are cracking me up

sadly, I guess the ones they had when I was a kid fall in the 'poorly run' category.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. Rule Four: When Daddy needs more bourbon...

...ONE of you damn kids better shake a leg.

[BrotherBuzz]

9. Jeez louise, we were the designated adults at the kids table forever...

My spouse and I loved it. We were not chaperons at the table, but the favored guests. It wasn't until we were in our forties and had our first and only child that we were forced to leave the kids' table. All the good stuff happens at the kids' table because we taught them all the cool stuff (olives on fingers, burnt cork mustaches, cheese buck teeth, 'The first Marine found the bean, parlez-vous' song, Queen Victoria face, ad infinitum) adults would disapprove of; we miss that special table.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

10. Let me guess, before your long run as favored guests at the kids table...

...did you try that shit at the adult table? :)

[BrotherBuzz]

14. I wouldn't dare, but my wife has just the right touch...

and she learned from the master, her father. Her father had some Victorian values (born in 1902), yet was an advertising sales manager for US News and World Report, and was well known for his pranks and jokes nationwide. Everything we taught at the kids' table was first tested with an adult crowd. Cheese buck teeth, check. Burnt cork mustache, done that. Queen Victoria imitation, yep.

Her Queen Victoria imitation (taught by her father) is her stock in trade, and people we haven't seen in decades always comment on it, laugh, and ask her to do it again. Amazing, what simple upturned coffee cup and cloth napkin on the head, and puffed cheeks can do to a crowd.

One of my wife's better secret tricks is throwing her voice. She can mimic a loud seagull in the room while looking totally straight faced and disinterested. I often bust a gut laughing while I watch people looking all over the place for the damn seagull. It's fun way to kill time on a bus or subway, too.

On edit: Come to think of it, we weren't regulars at the kids' table until my wife appeared. Hmmm, ya think? ;)

[deucemagnet]

11. That's the problem with adult tables.

Positions at the adult table are lifetime appointments; you have to wait until somebody dies before a spot opens up. I was well into my 30s before I got a seat.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

15. The Adult Table should always accomodate newbies. It should get...

...longer with age, much like many body parts of the adults sitting there.

[scarlet_owl]

16. Rule five: everybody needs to put olives on their fingers.

That's what we always did at the kid's table.