Excuse Me, That's My Seat

 I grew up eating at a round kitchen table.  Very egalitarian.  Except for our various heights and ability to be heard over the dinner din, we all started on an equal footing as far as meal time real estate goes.  I don't think my parents had any specific social engineering concept in mind when they bought the table.  It was just that a round table fit best in our small eat in kitchen.  My Dad always sat in the same seat as did all three kids.  My Mom's chair, of course, was the one nearest the stove.  A utilitarian decision born of ergonomic necessity.  I never once witnessed her sitting in her chair for more than three minutes at a time.  To this day, even at the age of  83, my mother flits around the Thanksgiving table like some servile hummingbird ready to fill your plate with more string bean casserole or grab a bit of over crisped turkey skin from your plate to see if it was seasoned correctly- Everyone else's needs always more urgent than her own desire to sit down and eat a proper meal herself.

King Arthur, on the other hand, did have social engineering  in mind when he gathered the knights at his round table.  The equalizing force of a round table was so powerful, in fact, that they named the entire enterprise after it; King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  That was perhaps the last time a round table was ever seen in a boardroom.  There has not been a chief executive since Arthur who did not want to sit at a position of prominence during power lunches.  The head of the table is psychologically powerful as well as geographically desirable .  So in spite of my parents best efforts at raising us in the most democratic fashion, where both kings and peasants alike have the same seat at the table, I grab the head chair whenever I can. Where do you think the term "chairman of the board" came from? 

Have you ever been one of the first to arrive at a restaurant where there is a table waiting for you and ten of your friends?  Do you grab the seat at the head of the table?  I do.  Or if it is a birthday celebration I make sure to sit as close to the honoree as possible.  Most people stand around waiting for someone else to make the first move.  I don't think anyone has ever won a game of musical chairs by being nice.
"You take this seat".
"Oh no, you take it.  I insist".    Puh-lease.  If something as simple as where I sit during dinner is going to give me automatic authority, I am not going to waste the opportunity.  I will take all the help I can get in the supremacy department.  Guys with my physical stature don't have a ton of natural charisma.  I figure you have to be at least 5' 11 ", be able to palm a basketball, and have a deep, calm, sonorous voice, not a whiny shrill Long Island accent to command any attention at a round table.

As a kid growing up I did not win too many contests in the macho feats category.  I am going to let you ladies in on a little secret.  Put eight boys together in a woodland setting and they are going to determine whose urine stream makes the biggest parabola (and you thought ninth grade geometry wasn't apropos to real world life)   Needless to say my arc, while elegant in it's design, did not go the distance.  So back at the dining hall you bet your ass I made sure I grabbed the best seat possible, next to the cool nineteen year old counselor, who we were all convinced, could drown a carpenter ant sixty inches distant.  

 

Even today I put a neurotic emphasis on seating arrangements at holiday dinners and family gatherings.  When the dinner is at my house I am the chairman of the (holiday) board.  One time, during an especially well attended Thanksgiving feast, my wife found it necessary to put an extra chair, next to mine, at the head of the table to accommodate one of my brothers-in-law.  If he is reading this I apologize for all the "accidental" elbows to the gut.  I actually did have plenty of room to use my knife and fork.  My seating arrangement hierarchy pathos extends to weddings and bar mitzvahs as well.  If I am the Uncle, do not sit me with the second cousins.  That insult is compounded even more by the fact that banquet tables are invariably round.  As if all the guests are on an equal footing with the bride.  Puh-lease.