Table Etiquette

While we were on our month-long trip to California and Arizona, I fussed at Kacy several times about how she was holding her fork to eat meals.  She has held her fork properly for years.  At least, I think she has held her fork properly all this time.  I remember showing her how to use it a long time ago and never noticing since then that she was doing it incorrectly.  I mean with or without an eating utensil, whether it be spoon, fork, spork, or even her grubby little mitts, the girl just can't seem to get all the food from her plate to actually make it into her mouth anyways.  It is absolutely common knowledge around our house that when a meal is over, the messiest spot at the table is going to be Kacy's.  I really haven't figured out why though.  It's sort of an anomaly really.  She appears to be eating normally; just like the rest of us.  But then when she picks up her plate and is excused from the table there is certain to be gravy dripping from the front of her shirt, dropped chunks of meat on the floor, massive quantities of corn on her skirt, chair and all around within a 5-foot radius.  Usually this scene is never complete without a spot or two of gravy somewhere on her forehead or neck and a kitten merrily lapping up the spilled droplets of milk at the edge of the table.  When Kacy is finished placing her dishes in the sink, it is almost a guarantee that I will discover something sticky in her hair as she kisses me before her bath.  Even when I haven't served anything sticky all day, Kacy has a special ability to manufacture stickiness right out of thin air and smear it all over her hair.  I think she must take a bite to eat and throw a clump of hair in to chew on for seasoning and good measure as she eats.  Then again, maybe it's just a survival instinct.  Given the amount of food that has to be wiped down, swept up, or eaten by the pets after each meal, maybe her body is compensating in order to fully receive enough calories to regenerate my overactive spastic kid.

Back to the fork...while on the trip, Kacy regularly held her fork with her entire hand either over it or under it.  This is similar to how small babies hold forks when they learn to use them at one year of age.  The first time I saw it we were of course with family, so I tried to tell Kacy to hold her fork properly without drawing too much attention to her.  Her reply was somewhere along the lines of abject staring with a slack jaw and food poised precisely at the edge of her gaping mouth, ready to return to the table at any second.  After again, and more slowly, repeating, "Kacy, turn your fork over in your hand," Kacy still was in the twilight zone, but we had managed to capture the attention of everyone else at the table.  Tradd jumped in and ended it quickly since he was sitting next to her, by turning her hand over on the fork and everyone finished the meal.  This process repeated itself several times over the next couple of weeks until I was so fed up that at meal times, I would obsess over Kacy's damned fork.

When we returned to South Carolina, I fixed dinner at home that first night and we sat down to eat spaghetti at the dinner table.  Once again, Kacy decided to fully palm her fork from underneath, so that as she took a bite, her thumb was pointed at the opposite wall, the spaghetti was sliding down the back side of her hand and arm, and her elbow was bumping her left shoulder.  Each bite was a lesson in both contortion and ingenuity as Kacy attempted to get globs of spaghetti to actually land inside her mouth by forcing it to fly through the air and do a couple loop-de-loops just to get there.  I was a bit fed up and appalled at this point, so again Tradd stepped in to remedy the situation.  He carefully sat beside Kacy and showed her how to place her hand around the fork the proper way.  He explained to her about good table manners and how sometimes it is acceptable in our house to use the "shovel method" on a spoon while eating ice-cream, but never at any other time.  We thought we were in the clear because Kacy took the next bite just fine while holding her fork properly.  Then she dropped it on her plate to take a drink and as she picked it up again, she stared at it as though God himself had just asked her to take that fork and turn it into a freaking goose.  She started to place her hand under it again, then remembered it wasn't correct and came up with several different ways to incorrectly grip it before giving up, and shoveling more spaghetti into her mouth.  Urghh!

Again, Tradd stepped to the plate, but gave a totally different set of instructions.   It went something like this...

"Okay.  To eat, you hold your fork like this."  Tradd used his own hand on his own fork to show her then placed her hand on her fork in the proper position.

"If you want to stab someone, you hold it like this."  Tradd then used his hand on his fork to show her how she had just been holding her fork.  Not to be outdone by Kacy though, Tradd completed the demonstration by making a stabbing motion through the air as crimson spaghetti sauce dripped from the tines of his fork.  My jaw hit the table and I'm fairly certain anyone looking could have seen my food quivering on the edge of my mouth ready to head back to my plate too.  Storm started giggling her behind off right next to me and Cameron happily tossed her fork aside and just started shoveling spaghetti in with her fingers rather than take the time listening to all the instructions.

Miracle of all miracles though, it was as though a light went on in Kacy's head.  She got it!  She had actually caught on to what Tradd was saying.  Tradd sat there and whipped his fork around in his hand a few times repeating the phrases, "Eating.  Stabbing.  Eating.  Stabbing.  Got it?"  Kacy had gotten it.  She took her fork, held it to take a stab at the air and said, "Stabbing," then placed it correctly in her hand, scooped up some spaghetti and said, "Eating."  I kid you not; Kacy has not held her fork the wrong way one time since that night.

Some people, especially those who don't know Kacy, would think that Tradd and I are just absolutely torrible (that's a word of Kacy's from when she was younger; a cross between terrible and horrible) parents.  How could any decent parent who does not want to promote violence in their children, use such a despicable example to demonstrate the proper use of a fork at the dinner table?  I must confess that when Tradd first said it, I thought the same thing.  What the hell kind of parents are we?  We had to have gone very wrong somewhere along the line.  But as Kacy finally started to understand, I realized we are not promoting anything other than proper table etiquette at a level that Kacy naturally grasps.  Displays of physical strength, the ability to defend herself, and an inability to feel pain are definitely some of Kacy's dominant personal qualities.  We need to do some serious work in the area of agility before she grows up, but this girl is cut out to do something hard core in her future.

My brother envisions something in the area of Navy Seal or other black ops work.  Our recent trip to Sea World, while convincing my older daughter she wanted to work at Sea World and swim with Shamu, made Kacy fascinated with the fact that our military uses dolphins for special operations.  Maybe Phillip's vision will come true some day.  For now, Kacy is stuck on the thought of being a stunt girl when she grows up.  She wants to do all the really fun and cool stuff that the celebrities are too pansy to do themselves.  She thinks that would be tons of fun.  For the most part, I totally agree.

Yesterday, while repeatedly jumping off the arm of a bench in an attempt to land on a disc swing hanging from the tree by 20 feet of rope, I pictured Kacy being a stunt girl.  When Kacy said she wanted to swing, I assumed she would do what most people would do and walk up to the disc swing, sit on it, then push off the ground with her feet to start swinging.  Not Kacy.  The arm of the bench was about 2.5 feet off the ground.  Kacy grabbed the disc swing, walked over to the bench, held onto it while climbing up on the arm of the bench, grabbed the rope then jumped as high and as far as she could, trying to land on the disc with her legs around the rope.  The first time, she jumped just as I was starting to give her instructions on how to do it properly.  She didn't take the time to listen to a word I said but made it without any mishaps.  I was in total proud-parent shock.  Giggling at my expression, she jumped off, tossed the swing at me and told me to throw it to her when she was up on the bench.  I did this and she almost fell face-first off the bench trying to grab it on its way past.  About six more times Kacy attempted to jump on the swing and six times ended up with the wooden disc implanted in her forehead while dragging her scarred, bare legs across dead weeds, poison ivy, and grass spurs.  Each time though she held onto the rope for the ride, despite any pain, and we both laughed uncontrollably at each other as she raced back to try it again.  Without even a hint of hesitation, she made it again on the seventh time.  Yes, I can see Kacy being a stunt girl; and a damn good one at that, now that she's mastered table etiquette.