Spaghetti Kids

“GeekMan. FishMan. You’re sitting over there with the other kids.”

My brother and I looked at my mother in disbelief as she turned us away from the dining room and all the grownups chatting amicably within and pointed us towards the ‘kids’ table located in the kitchen. It wasn’t just that we were being turned away from the big people that was so shocking to us, it was that she didn’t even bother to get up from the table to escort us to our seats. In fact, she didn’t even bother to turn her head and look at us as she shooed us away. She merely made her declaration, pointed regally towards the kitchen and took another sip of her merlot. It was an almost physical slap across our faces, letting us know in no uncertain terms that even though we were in our early teens and didn’t think of ourselves as kids anymore, to ‘real’ grownups we were still thought of as nothing more than children.

Slightly taller children true, but children nonetheless.

Feeling insignificant to the max, FishMan and I left the grownups behind and made our way to the Kiddie Table. As we got closer to the table it dawned on us that of the seven kids present we would be the oldest children sitting there and thus, we were supposed to be the baby sitters of the other children during the meal so that the ‘real’ grownups could enjoy their meal in peace.

We nearly turned back then. Nearly.

After what seemed like hours of internal rebellion we realized that it was useless to argue and, sighing in resignation, we approached the table, found the only two available seats and sat down amongst the chaos that is the Kiddie Table. Now, many of you might think you know what I am speaking of when I say Kiddie Table, but on this day you would be wrong.

Horribly, terribly wrong.

You see, most Kiddie Table’s are fun affairs where children cavort with other children around their own age in freeform food flinging funfests. All the kids have fun until the meal is over and the grownups come to collect their children for the long car ride home. Or until one of the kid’s winds up with a plastic fork in their eye and blood running down their face.

You know, whichever comes first.

Sometimes there’s an older child who’s designated the ‘adult’ of the table and is considered to be ‘in charge’ of the other kids. The designated adult need not actually be the oldest child present; they just need to be considered the most ‘mature’ by at least two of the real grownups in the house. One of whom has no kids and thus considers themselves an expert on all things pertaining to children even though the last bit of ‘advice’ they doled out led to the arrival of EMS and what is now known as The Toaster Incident.

Remember, if a baby wants to play with a toaster, unplug it first.

The designated adult of the Kiddie Table will then be given instructions on what is, and is not, proper behavior for all the children during the meal. These instructions can be summed up as, “Keep the noise levels down, eat what we give you and stay in your seats until we’re finished eating.”

Sometimes, “And don’t kill each other.” is thrown in for legal reasons.

The designated adult would then nod in the most mature fashion they could manage and immediately start ordering the other kids around. The other children of course, would take great delight in ignoring the designated adult until they became so frustrated that they would go running to the adults with news of the other children’s’ misdeeds. This was in the hopes of courting favor in the adults’ eyes and thus being allowed to sit with them at the adult table and become the object of envy of the other children when they were punished for not listening to the designated adult.

Obviously, more often than not, the designated adult was female.

In this instance however, there was no designated adult. For while FishMan and I at the tender ages of 12 and 15 were clearly too old for the Kiddie Table, the other five children at the table were clearly too mentally retarded to be without constant adult supervision.

And when I say mentally retarded, I’m insulting the mentally retarded.

These kids were psychotic. If ADD and ADHD were animals and you were to trace their history you would find that they were first discovered here with these children. They weren’t just hyper; they were kinetically, frantically, hypersonic! Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. We all had chairs, but only FishMan and I were actually using them for their intended purpose. One of the other kids was using their chair as a podium from which to spout high-pitched sermons on the virtues of the Transformers vs. Go-Bots, complete with visual aids involving throwing all their Go-Bots toys to the hardwood floor one by one and watching parts fly in all directions while holding their Transformer toys aloft and screaming, “Go-Bots are poopie!”

And that was one of the girls.

The other kids were worse. Two were banging their plates screaming that they wanted their food, another was playing a game of tag… all by themselves, and the last was doing his best to find out if his whole hand could fit inside his right nostril because he was positive that he could then grab his brain and pull it out for show and tell at school on Monday.

I almost tried to help him. Almost.

After what felt like hours of this torture, but was probably more like a couple of lifetimes, one of the grownups took pity on us and brought out our food. And it just so happened that on this day our meal was spaghetti. Plain, no sauce added, spaghetti. No meatballs, no garlic toast, not even some cheese sprinkled on top. Just a mound of plain spaghetti with a tiny amount of butter on top of each plate and a glass of apple juice.

It’s a miracle that I was able to hold back my tears.

The grownups were busy laughing at their table, eating fried chicken, barbeque ribs, corn on the cob and other assorted dishes of delight, while FishMan and I were stuck in hell eating plain spaghetti with little monsters. And, as if that weren’t torturous enough, the other kids didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, they went positively bonkers with delight as plate after plate of plain spaghetti was placed in front of each of them.

[in unison] “Spaghetti!”
“I love spaghetti! Isn’t this a great dinner?”
“Hey, GeekMan! Doesn’t this spaghetti look like worms?”
“Ew! Worms are yucky!”
“No, not worms! It looks like hair!”
“Look at me FishMan! I’m wearing a wig made of Spaghetti!”
“No! It’s not hair! It looks like brains! Right GeekMan?”
“Oooo! Brains! Look, I’ll make them come out of my nose!”

[a fake sneeze and a handful of spaghetti flies to the floor]

[in unison] “Cool!”

[fake sneezing begins and handful after handful of spaghetti-brains begin flying in every direction]

“Oops! Sorry about that FishMan! I didn’t mean to get my brains all over you!”
“GeekMan! Hahaha! You’ve got brains all over your sneakers!”
“Don’t the brains look like worms when they’re on the floor?”
“Ewww!”
“Don’t let the worms eat your toes! They love to eat toes, so don’t let them!”
“Eeek!”
“The only way to stop them from eating your toes is to eat them first!”

And back onto their plates, and then into their mouths, the spaghetti went. At this point FishMan and I were in such a state of shock that we didn’t even know how to react to the fact that these kids were eating spaghetti that moments before had been on their chairs, their bodies, the floor, the walls, and even on, and under, dirty shoes. Thankfully, during this whole fiasco, FishMan and I had managed to protect our plates from their grubby little hands, so at least our food was…

“Hey GeekMan, can I have some of your spaghetti?”

[grubby little hand that moments before was shoved deep into right nostril grabs a handful of my spaghetti]

“Thanks!”
“Hey! That wasn’t nice! You shouldn’t take from other people like that unless they’re done and he hasn’t even started yet. You should go get him some more spaghetti!”
“I’m sorry, sis. She’s right GeekMan, I’ll go get you some more spaghetti, OK?”

[goes to giant pot in kitchen, reaches in with his dirty, snot encrusted hand and plops a handful of spaghetti onto my plate]

“Ok, that’s it. Mom, check please, I’m done.”
“Me too.”
“But GeekMan, FishMan, you haven’t even eaten anything yet!”
“But somehow, I don’t think we could eat another bite, right FishMan? Isn’t that amazing?”
“Well. Are you sure you don’t want some more spaghetti?”
“Mom, I think it’s fair to say that we are so done that we may never be able to eat spaghetti again. Ever.”

And, to this very day, I still have trouble eating spaghetti.