All across America at the Thanksgiving dinner many children will sit at the kiddie table while their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other older relatives will sit at the grown-up table.

I am the oldest of all my cousins, and I always wanted to sit at the grown-up table at Thanksgiving.

But each year I had to sit at the kiddie table.

Finally, when I was old enough, I got to sit at the grown-up table. Now that I’ve sat there a few years I want to go back to the kiddie table.

My cousin, the famous Kelly Remsburg, and I have decided the kiddie table was much more fun.

When you sit at the grown-up table they ask you questions like: “How are your classes going?” and “Would you please pass the potatoes?” and other grown-up talk that you never got to listen to for years because you sat at the kiddie table.

At the kiddie table you talk about that time you were playing Pictionary and you used your cousin’s name as the clue for the word “ugly” and made her cry, or the time another cousin’s dog bit half of your hand off.

At the kiddie table you yell, “We’re out of mashed potatoes!” and you warn your cousins not to touch that cranberry marshmallow fluff your mom made because it tastes bad.

Everything at the grown-up table is for the grandparents and their kids; all of them catch up on old stuff you could care less about. But the grandchildren have all the fun at the kiddie table making fun of the grown-ups.

I always thought it was neat how Grandpa would occasionally sit at the kiddie table. Maybe he just grew weary of the adult politics and wanted to have some fresh fast-paced conversation loaded with put-downs and burpings.

Maybe he was just trying to civilize us at an extra crazy caffeine-loaded Thanksgiving. Each year the rugrats load up on can after can of Dr Pepper, Pepsi or Mountain Dew.

Maybe he liked hearing us do Teen Wolf imitations of “I want a keg of beer!”

The strange thing is now there are just as many grandchildren as there are grown-ups. How did that happen? Maybe we’ll talk about that at the kiddie table this year.

So now some of the young ones get to sit at the grown-up table. They’re spoiled! I think they should have to work their way up like the older grandchildren did.

Oh well, maybe they’ll learn how to ask for the potatoes properly that way.

It is always easier to excuse yourself from the kiddie table than the grown-up table so you can watch football. The grown-ups sort of had this expectation of sitting at the table for some time after dinner.

I’d wander over and turn on the game. I’m sure my dad and uncles were appreciative of this because they could see the game from the table.

Soon they would wander over and watch the game with me, but I usually was alone in cheering for the Dallas Cowboys.

Nonetheless, that made watching the game all the more fun because the Cowboys usually would win. And they’re going to whip the Washington Redskins this year.

So this Thanksgiving Kelly and I have decided to sit at the kiddie table again and let a couple rugrats invade the grown-ups by having our spots.

We’ll go back to throwing food, singing Adam Sandler songs, saying “Bpthpthpth!” to the young ones, laughing at each other and burping when we’re done.

And we’ll be thankful for not having to act grown-up 365 days of the year because we are all still kids inside.

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Tim Frerking is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Pomeroy. He is the Daily’s University editor.