Assigned Seating

Do you ever get those valued few seconds to yourself where you can sit for just a quick moment and do something just for you, ya know, like pay the bills and balance the virtual check book? Those moments are infrequent and oh so precious. When you know no one will be pulling at your ankles or grabbing your arm or crying for the most critical of things to be done at that exact moment. So you grab the laptop and a mountainous pile of receipts as you dash to the table to input them into Quicken and check your online bank balance to verify that you haven't messed anything up too bad and the check for the power bill really did clear so they won't be cutting you off and letting you dine by candle light tonight. Those are precious moments in the life of a housewife.

Laptop in hand you approach the kitchen table to begin the arduous task that lay ahead. You sit down and place your tools at your easy reach. Planting your forearms on the tabletop before you, you ready to type away when..."No...that's disgusting...I just washed the whole table down two minutes ago!" you think to yourself. "Come on people. You are such slobs. Why can't you just quit making messes? I haven't got time of a table deep clean eight times a day. It's not like what I'm asking is that difficult, is it? No more chin dribble of milk off your adorable little chins with morning cereal. Stop with the drippy red juice as you scoop your maraschino cherries from the jar and chair step your way around the table to your bowls on the other side of the kitchen. Even a snack of goldfish crackers ends in a nasty wet paste of cracker-ness that you smear around happily exploring your new "finger paint" that then dries into a coating of peaks and valleys of...of...well of something that later resembles a course sandpaper to exfoliate my forearms as I work. Call a halt to all watermelon juice dripped elbows depositing their sugary sweet sticky on the chairs below. I decree a cease and desist order to all granola bars that coat the table with a faint residue of evil honey and melted chocolate chips, such order also in effect for the floor coated with a lovely layer of chunky granola mess. It's enough already."

Growing up we had assigned seating at my table. I was strategically placed at the head of the table between my mother and my father with the other three siblings at the other end of the table. While I would like to claim it was because I was the favorite, it is really because my siblings and I could not get along. Ever. Assigned seating is normal to me but to this point in my little family, we just sat anywhere we wanted.

For years now with my own family, I always strategically choose my seat at the table. Placing my plate down on prime real estate with no sticky kid remnants, or the least of said remnants. Then yesterday happened. The kids had nasty-ied all five positions at the table but one. It was bad. After Saturday night ice cream, we had hurried the kids off to bed, then rushed the morning breakfast so we wouldn't be late to church, a quick lunch after church so little people could nap had left it's mark on our poor kitchen with a pile of dishes to catch up on and a rough looking situation at the table. There was only one nice seat left and I carefully removed the chair from that spot so no one would take it, knowing I wanted to sit and check my email during afternoon naps. When everyone was settled, I walked in to find Ben at the table. In the one clean spot, having a sticky, healthy fruit snack. That, as they say, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Kudos to him for choosing a healthy snack. Fire and lightening bolts to him for stickying my oasis of clean on the kitchen table. I asked why he had taken the time to drag a chair to the spot and sit there and no surprise he said with his body flopping, wailing and whining, I'm so picked on voice, because everywhere else was "sticky" and "nasty." Yes, I agreed. And he made them that way with the help of his lovely sidekick, Maddie. Brian was right there to back me up and I made the plunge, the big announcement.

We will now be enforcing something I've thought of for a long, long time. The Zufelts will have assigned seating at the dinner table. And the breakfast, lunch, brunch, snack time x100, craft and night time ice cream tables. All of them. No exceptions. They chose their own spots and now will be sitting there until they turn 18 or can stop spilling, whichever comes first. They have been instructed where the table wiping cloth is and they already know how to wipe up a mess if their spots become dirty between mommy washings. Gasp!! I know. Child abuse or reality check. It's a fine line sometimes and I walk it often. I'm just hoping in the long run they will be better, more independent people for the experience.

My sister and I used to harass each other with who was cleaner and scrape every single crumb that fell from our lunch sandwiches and put them on our plates in an effort to prove we hadn't dropped any crumbs and were therefore the cleanest. I dream of the day that my kids will have a competition like that.

And just as I was finishing this terribly long post, Maddie climbs up in her chair right next to me and began brushing the crumbs at her spot over into my spot. Remnants of the animal cracker snack she had twenty minutes ago. Ugh. Assigned seating may not solve all my problems after all.