Cleaning the Table

When I was a child of unknown years, but certainly older than my children are now, I had a responsibility at dinner time.   I had to bring the dishes in from the table to the kitchen.   This was cruel and unusual punishment I reckoned, what with me being a child and child labor being largely illegal.   But I didn’t know who to call to report my parents and so I was stuck with the duty.

There was an additional job I had to do a lot of nights and that was to wipe the table after the dishes were removed.   Removed and just placed on the counter, I might add.   No scraping food or putting them in the dishwasher, merely conveying them from one room to the next.    Once the table was empty I had to get a cloth and wet it and then I had to wipe the entire table.   The whole thing—a round table for four, a huge surface area I thought.   It was agony.   I protested.   My plea went unheard and so I drudged through the whole minute-and-a-half process including returning the cloth to the sink area.

Later on when I was older I had to put dishes into the dishwasher, but I’m scarred from the memory and I can’t retell it now for fear of going into a deep depression on the terrible childhood I had to endure with parents so uncaring and inconsiderate as mine were, knowing how much I wanted to go do something fun instead of helping the family out.

My children are responsible for bringing their things to the sink area now.   They’re rewarded with a stamp for it, which they accrue and when they’ve reached a very large number they get to get some reward.   Later the clearing off of their dishes will become mandatory and we’ll roll out something else on their responsibilities list.

Tonight as I was doing the very quick job of wiping down the table I remembered how much I hated the task as a child, and how much I enjoy seeing a crumb and smear-free table as an adult instead.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Tub War:   It was bath night, as it is some nights in our house.   My daughter was already in the tub when her brother came careening around the corner saying, “let’s play cards!”  She asked how they could do that in the tub and my son grinned a sly grin at me and told her the new cards I had gotten were plastic and could get wet.   While they checked out the cards I went to help clean up from dinner.   I came back a bit later and told them it was time to get out when they asked to finish their game.   They were playing War and they only had a few more cards to go.   The game ended soon enough, but there was the matter of counting the cards to see who had won.   We had to call it a tie when after three counts I realized my daughter was counting her cards and then dropping them back into the tub and losing them.   They plan on a rematch at next bath time.