Kids' Table

I managed to talk my weirdo roommates out of getting a pool table in favor of a dining room table, like grownups. We went to the thrift store (St. Vincent's) and looked at some chintzy crap until I saw the perfect specimen. It has two retractable leaf extensions (way more convenient than the kind with the leaf that removes from the center and then you have to store it somewhere), and most importantly, it has diagonal cross-braces between the legs. Unfortunately, the finish was a little too orange and a little too glossy. Also, one leg is a little wobbly (easiest fix ever). So I decided to go for it, strip off the awful finish and stain it a dark walnut or something.

Right now I am about halfway through that process, having applied stripper (environmentally friendly citrus hippie shit, duh), peeled it off with a putty knife and then used an abrasive pad and mineral spirits (not so eco-friendly) to get down to the bare wood. Next up is some minor sanding, a thorough cleaning to remove all the dust, then apply the stain and one or two coats of polyurethane.

Important facts of interest:
1. Mineral spirits will tear right through latex gloves.
2. The can says to avoid 'prolonged contact with skin', but doesn't specify if that's a few seconds or a few hours.
3. My hands still feel kinda funny.
4. This table is going to be awesome. Especially after I buy a runner and a candelabra.
5. Dinner at my house is very soon going to be like this:




Late last night, during a much needed break from the movie I was working on, I called my mom. That extra 3 hours between EST and PST means that my unreasonably late schedule is compatible with my mom's unforgivably early one. We talked a little about family and her friends and somehow started talking about the dining room table that we had when my sister and I were young. It's a little clunky, with large legs and a slate-ish finish that gave it an overall rustic look that my parents traded in for a cleaner, more modern table with white legs a few years ago. The old one is still in the family, though; my sister Beth is using it for a craft table or something for Ethan (age 8, still awesome). Anyway, I began to realize how similar that old one is to the one I just bought. My mom was saying how she would never let hers go out of the family, that she still has plans to get it back someday when she is old and doesn't care anymore and she'll put her feet up on the diagonal crossbars, even though they get all dirty and don't look very good. I can tell you with authority that this is true; I just peeled off a thick layer of crud and grime with the finish from the crossbars on mine, right after I peeled off some crayon and what looked to be glittery puffy paint on one of the leaves. Maybe mine has already been someone else's craft table. Maybe Saint Vincent's is a space-time wormhole, although I'm not sure if my table came from the past or the future.

Anyway, the point of all this is that when I finished work at about 6 in the morning, as I stumbled back toward the metro, that conversation with my mom was bouncing around in my head. And in that state that happens in the early morning after bad daytime-sleep and then an 11-hour shift (a state that I sometimes like to call Beyond Tired, because the fog of exhaustion seems to lift and you really think everything becomes clear again), I was thinking about my mom putting her feet up and the nostalgia of objects and kids and glitter. And all that acted as a spark and I started thinking about (pause) having kids. This happens every now and again. This is one of the weirder causes for such a feeling, though.

The last time was pretty straightforward; I was a private English tutor for an 11-year-old named Valentine while I was in Brittany (just as illegal as my main teaching job). Valentine was great. She was adorable and shy and obviously bright but had some difficulty with English only because she didn't like to make mistakes so she didn't ever talk in class. And learning a language is a process that requires making a lot of out-loud mistakes. I enjoyed working with her a lot, because it was good to have a one-on-one interaction and tailor the lessons to her strengths and weaknesses. Each time we met for a lesson I would give her a new sentence to practice pronouncing at home that would emphasize some particular phonym in English.

The French don't have an 'H' sound in their language so they have a really hard time hearing it and a very, very hard time pronouncing it correctly. They also don't make a distinction between a long 'E' and a short 'I' sound, so the words 'sit' and 'seat' sound exactly the same to them. I want you to take a minute and think about all the swear words that use a short 'I' and picture my freshman students trying to say 'beach', 'sheet', etc. Now picture me trying not to laugh in front of a room of 14-year-olds.

To avoid such issues down the road, I wanted to train Valentine's ear a little bit so I gave her sentences like, "The hall in his house is hot", "Really, we rarely watch westerns" and "This is the thirteenth floor of this building." That last one is supergreat. They have no 'TH' sound either so they want to substitute S's and Z's and the notion of making their tongues visible between their teeth is a really silly one for them.

On a marginally related note, reports indicate that the most difficult word in English is "squirrel". If you have friends (close enough friends that it's OK to laugh at them) who speak English as a second language, write it down and ask them to pronounce it. It's usually pretty entertaining.

Anyway, the lessons with Valentine were good; I helped her with her homework and made her talk more than she wanted to and I think her grade improved quite a bit. It was good to help someone learn in a really tangible way. But really I wanted to play kick the can and tickle her. I pictured us spreading Legos out on a floor and lying on our stomachs, building nonsense and comparing our work. But I felt that was a little outside the scope of our business relationship.

Someday it's going to be great to sit at the dining room table and help my kids with their homework. And if they get crayon or glittery paint all over it, I'll just refinish it again.