Admit it, you miss the kids’ table at family holidays. You’ve spent your entire adult life wistfully sighing aloud, like some kind of eternally hopeless romantic, missing your long-past glory days of olde. And there’s good reason for it! The kids’ table was like having bottle service at a bitchin’ nightclub, where the celebrities get away with anything they want. Here are just a few reminders of why the kids’ table was the best place to ever eat.

There’s Less Pressure To Use Utensils

Photo: Where is Darren Now? 

If the food makes it into your mouth, instead of, say, the floors or walls, that’s a huge win. Given that the kids table is more dodgeball than decathlon, there’s really only one rule: eat successfully. However you’re able to accomplish that, go for it. Nobody cares if it’s drinking gravy from your mug or chomping asparagus like licorice whips.

There’s No Questions From Relatives

Photo: Runt of the Web

You don’t have to carefully plot your bouncy, overly rehearsed answers about how school’s going or what your big summer plans are; no lame panel discussion like that, no way. You’re surrounded by the wildest batch of lunatics at the party and all they want to do is tell jokes and make a mess. You don’t have to worry about anything resembling appearances.

You Get Fed Quicker

Photo: Almost Halfway There

At family holidays, kids need to be fed before adults or the entire house burns to the ground. As long as it’s not sugar, feeding kids might be the only way to slow them down. Extended family get-togethers are like music festivals to tykes, where all their just-as-insane peers show up to ball out, so — please, save yourself — just get food in them! It’s the only thing that’ll keep the house standing.

It Can Pretty Much Go In Any Direction Of Crazy

Photo: The Odyssey Online

The grown-ups’ table discussion is always the same. You have your polite Q&A session, followed by one person getting the spotlight dragged on them, which turns into a surprisingly political dialogue that spirals before halting by a forced collection of recent mundane interests, hobbies, and activities. At the kids table, it could be who makes the best fart noises or a game of ‘How Many Things Can We Set On Fire Before The Adults Notice’? You have no idea. It can go from tea party to Lord of the Flies before you even finish your first glass of soda.

You Spend Your Entire Adult Life Wishing You Were Back At It

Photo: Travel and Leisure

Over the years, you build up your time at the kids’ table with rosy-colored nostalgia and wish you were back there. There are roughly three stages to eating at family holidays:

• First stage: Sitting at the kids’ table while wanting to be at grown-ups’ table.
• Second stage: Seemingly indefinite teenage diner identity crisis.
• Third stage: Sitting at grown-ups’ table wanting to be at kids’ table.

All hail the beautiful and glorious chaos of the kids’ table!