I am sitting on the couch in our family room. In front of me is our coffee table. It has a top (obviously) and one shelf underneath it. The thing about it that's intriguing me right now is what is currently on top of and what is on the bottom shelf of the table. I think the contents actually tell quite a bit about our family.
It is definitely not a decorative coffee table (which is not to say it isn't good looking--it is--but it's not just a puff piece of furniture which serves no function). It is absolutely functional.
I'll start on top (which almost always needs a nice spray of Windex): Bananagrams and Uno and two empty coffee mugs. That's it. And a lot of fingerprints.
Last night there were five of us playing what we like to call "No Apologies Uno" at this table. Two parents, two siblings, one girlfriend all playing for the win. When you slap down the "Draw Four" card, you can't say you're sorry. You just have to slap it down with purpose and attitude with no regrets. If Steven has called out "card alert!", that means some player is down to fewer than five cards, which means if you're sitting next to that player and you have a "reverse" or a "skip" card then you should not be afraid to play it, and you should be prepared to accompany your power play with a nice stare down or a sinister laugh. Uno brings out sides of us that you might not otherwise know exist.
Following three games of family Uno, Steven and I played a game of Bananagrams. Allison, Steven's girlfriend, had never played before so she watched and helped him out. It was a VERY close game--down to one tile. I won't even tell you who won because it didn't matter. It was just a fun, good-natured ten minutes.
The bottom shelf is quite a bit more cluttered than the top of the table. There are three piles of stuff, so I'll go pile-by-pile.
Pile #1: several Zits books (the comic strip compilation), a Far Side book, an Exploratorium visual book, a Runner's World magazine, A Bon Appetite magazine, a couple of Time magazines, A National Geographic, a book (The Light We Cannot See), and a small ceramic bowl that Olivia made in art class in high school that is currently filled with a game that she made for me and Dave last Christmas.
Pile #2: the Uno box, the Xfinity channel list brochure, the game Utter Nonsense, two books that I have on my reading list (Mary Coin and After You), and the dictionary that I received at my high school graduation.
Pile #3: A VERY large National Geographic world atlas, the game Double Shutter, a couple more Time magazines, and the book Fates and Furies, which I got for Christmas.
If I were a sociologist, what would I make of our family based on what's on our coffee table?
Since I actually know what all this stuff actually represents to us, it's hard for me to approach it with an unbiased eye. So instead I'll just tell you what it all means to me:
There are games on the table because we have played games together since the kids were born. We have, over two decades, gone from Candy Land to Pretty, Pretty Princess to Monopoly to Risk to Settlers of Catan, with dozens more games in between. Our current favorites are, as indicated by their position on top of the table, Bananagrams and Uno. We are not especially competitive with each other in general, but there definitely are certain games that bring out our snarky side. "Utter Nonsense" is a game where you pick a card from the "Accent" pile, and then pick a card with a ridiculous phrase to say using that accent. You can see how this could wind up mildly (or grossly) offensive. If you're the sensitive sort, you should probably sit out games at our house.
I'm a bit of a news junkie. The piles of magazines are mostly mine, although Dave reads the Time and the National Geographic as well. I run. I lay claim to the Runner's World. As well as the Bon Appetite. I'm not a gourmet cook by any stretch. Mostly I love reading the articles about food in places I have been or would like to go, as well as the column by Andrew Knowlton. He talks about his cooking and his family in a very relatable way. Occasionally I will clip out recipes (and by clip out, I mean tear out entire pages), and then if I don't throw the pages away by mistake, there's a chance I may at some point try to cook the recipe. It NEVER looks like it does in the picture.
The Xfinity channel guide is there because we just switched to it and we don't know the channel numbers yet. We watch a fair amount of TV. Olivia can practically quote you all nine seasons of "How I Met Your Mother."
The Zits books and the Far Side technically belong to Steven, although we have all enjoyed them over the years. Zits perfectly captures the high school teenage boy, or maybe it just perfectly captured our particular high school teenage boy. Far Side perfectly captures our family's sense of humor, which tends to be on the side of the sarcastically absurd.
The dictionary, as I mentioned earlier, is mine. It's on the coffee table because if I'm reading or watching television and a I come across a word I do not know, I like to look it up. It's not that I have to look it up. I enjoy looking it up. I like learning new words. I think it's probably more general--I like learning. Period. But looking up words is fun to me. The kids all look up words on their phones or computers. I like the feel of turning the pages in the dictionary. I like to see how quickly I can find the word. I like the delicate nature of dictionary paper. Call me crazy. It also comes in handy to check words during Bananagrams.
The books, currently, are all mine. I love to read. Love historical fiction. Love a story well told. I usually have two books going at a time.
The giant Atlas is there because we look up geographic stuff all the time. Mostly while we're watching the news. It's interesting to see where cities are, and where borders are, and how far places are from one another. We usually look something up to try to answer some question we have in reference to a story we have seen, but then end up having a long conversation about why the story was on in the first place--what made it happen, what will happen next, who will it affect... The atlas is a great conversation starter. And both Steven and I love maps. Of everything. Countries. Cities. College campuses. The metro. BART. Maps are fun. The atlas is Steven's--a Christmas present from me and Dave a few years ago.
That's our coffee table. It reflects, in my opinion, our family and what we hold dear, what we want close at hand. It reflects people who like to think, like to talk about what they think, and like to laugh with one another (or sometimes at one another).
The top is usually slightly cluttered and could use some cleaning. The piles underneath are almost never neatly stacked. But it creates an atmosphere that, to me, is very much like our family: warm and comfortable.
