Table for Six

The table is set for six.  I've made a healthy homemade meal.  But, no matter what I make for dinner, every one is pretty much exactly the same.  It's a feast of disappointment, whining, resentment and arguments.  There's always plenty to go around.  Plus there's even leftovers for a snack later.  But likely, they will be carefully wrapped up only to be passively-aggressively thrown in the trash a week later.

Eating dinner together is important for a family to connect.  

I'm sure I read this somewhere.  

By someone who was clearly insane.  Or I must be doing this all wrong.  Because eating dinner together with MY family just makes me want to disconnect from them and eat alone in a closet or solitary confinement.  Both sound cozy.  I'd say dinner is nothing more than a battleground for an intricate power play between my kids for attention.   But, it's more like WWIII with a caterer.   

First, there's the Corrector.  The Corrector is always right.  That's the delusion anyway.   And nit picky.  Oh so effing nit picky.  About everything.  No unimportant, irrelevant detail will go uncorrected.  Not on the Corrector's watch!  

Then there's the Contrarian.  The Contrarian will take the counterargument to whatever you said just because you said it.  And does it with utter conviction no matter how outlandish or far fetched it is even contradicting him(or her)self. 

And you've got to have the Comedian.  Which we do.  The Comedian will try to steal the spotlight from the Corrector and the Contrarian, who are escalating to the point of fisticuffs, by talking over both of them to tell an inappropriately timed, inappropriate joke.    

Lastly, there's the Peacekeeper.  The Mother Teresa of the table.  Head bowed in prayer that it will all end soon and peacefully. The Peacekeeper often asks to be excused from the table first.  Probably because the Peacekeeper is the only one not competing and eating.   The Peacekeeper is officially a saint.

Then there's me and my husband, when he makes it home in time for dinner with all of us that is.  (I can't say I blame him when he doesn't.)  We are the referees.  Most times we'll make the same call about the players and punish them for their infractions accordingly.  But, then sometimes, we don't.  Because sometimes the other ref needs to get a pair of glasses to see the completely obvious foul that just occurred right in front of his face.  WTF?

I have seen the future.

And this is what every Thanksgiving will be like until I die. 
Except for the additional boyfriends & girlfriends at the table.
Who may eventually become sons-in-law & daughters-in-law.
Making it a table for 10.
And, thus, even more complicated.