Editors' Note

A week from today Thanksgiving arrives, and with it, a difficult question will be posed, and must be answered: “This year, will I sit at the kids’ table or the adult table?” As college students, we occupy a particularly weird space at family gatherings. We’re hosts because we’re at our own houses, but guests because we don’t actually live in our own houses anymore. We’re adults, because we do important, big people things like argue with the landlord, but we’re kids because, in the end, our parents are the ones signing the checks or calling the better business bureau. But to the question at hand: adult table or kid table? When we were little, it was our greatest goal to sit with the adults in the real chairs, eat off plates that weren’t paper, and maybe score a sip of wine (which we would hate, but pretend to enjoy). But you know what? Now that we’ve been to the promised land of expensive flatware and politically -charged conversation, all we really want is some soda, some dirty jokes and gossip, and the possibility of a food fight. Being an adult is highly overrated. Take your place at the kid table. Happy Thanksgiving. And remember, no holiday has been fully celebrated unless, after staggering away from the table, you can fit the whole clan onto the couch and watch the single most mindless movie you can find on TV.

Archived article by Erica Stein