The Following Go Into Effect Immediately

If you are one of my closest 136 friends, it means we must be Facebook buddies and you may have already heard about some of the new rules at the dinner table in my house. Yes, even though I mock rules and disregard them faster than lima beans, I have to have some structure when it comes to a six-year old and eight-year old boy.

Let me admit upfront that my own infantile behavior is very likely a major cause of the situation. After all, I believe kiddies are a reflection of their parents. Which must explain why I finally had to censor the dinnertime conversation. For some reason this one particular topic kept coming up, over and over. Now I know what it must be like to read my blog regularly considering I had to make Rule #1. Hear ye, hear ye:

Dinner Table Rules

1. No talking about your balls (I really don’t know why they think balls are a good topic of conversation during dinner – we don’t even eat brussels sprouts)
2. No throwing food over the balcony railing (even though it would be fun to see who can hit the townhome across the street)
3. No throwing Drew over the railing (this has been threatened by me and therefore made into a rule – fair enough)
4. No touching each other (or your own balls – this one is difficult when you are used to constantly touching yourself – we are men)
5. No burping on purpose (this one is very difficult to enforce since it is highly debatable what is natural and forced – I have noticed a direct proportion to the younger you are, the more likely you are to be full of shit and totally faking burps for fun)
6. Don’t eat vegetables (this was Will’s contribution and was instantly eliminated like Commandments 11-20 that disappeared when Moses dropped that tablet into shattered bits of rubble)
7. No loud noises (unless they are funny and only repeated a dozen times or so)
8. No licking napkins (for some reason this has been a big problem)
9. No farting noises (or actual farting)
10. No spitting or drooling like a slobbery gross dog (this one gets violated a surprising number of times)

The good news is that everything is legal again once we are done eating dinner. Violating dinner table rules is easy to sanction – no dessert. It amazes me how threatened they are by the thought of no dessert versus some of my other warnings.

For example, they boys like to play on the MacBook and iPad. I let them carry them over to the couch to get comfy. I admit I get a little nervous when I watch them walk with these expensive and fragile entertainment devices. After all, Drew is my spiller/dropper (he spills milk all the time – which I never cry over – and/or drops large portions of food on the floor) and Will is my bumper (he hits his feet, legs and head on inanimate objects all the time – a chip off the old block). So I keep imagining Drew simply dropping the iPad and Will tripping over something and the laptop flying against a wall.

My warning to them is always along the lines of: “Don’t drop that or I will cut off your head and put it on a big stake on the balcony for all the neighbors to see while crows eat your eyeballs.”

They look at me with big tasty birdfeed eyeballs and say, “Really Daddy? Will you do that?”

I nod my head up and down affirmatively while smiling and say, “Noooooo, I would never do that,” and then I wink at them. Dad of the Year is all mine this year. Etiquette awards may take some work before we qualify.