The Real Black Sheep of the Family

Back in the day, like three years ago or so, T.V. Land produced a great commercial advertising a little something called “The Family Table.”  To earn some credibility, this television station would ask a few famous Hollywood celebrities to endorse this ideology; however, each star involved would frantically search the Google internet machine to which they would perform a query as to what exactly a family table was.  Perhaps the most popular response from the computer would have been a sassy, Are you sure you don’t mean Bube Tube?  Who sits down at the family table anymore?  That went out on the curb with Beaver Cleaver and black and white television.  I take that back, I believe the Last Supper was the last time anybody sat down to the table as a collective group to eat a meal.  I don’t think even the family table would know what to do if everybody decided to gather around it for dinner.  It would probably start a process of elimination—Let’s see…It’s not Thanksgiving, or Christmas, nobody looks like they’re going to die…Maybe I should look at my handbook in reference to how I should act… With that being said, I’m pretty sure you could find one easily and in like new—if not mint-- condition.  Rarely do you discover anything on craigslist that is still in its original packaging and has that “never been used” profile, but this item could possibly win you some bar bets for sure.   It doesn’t have a sense of humor since nobody tells outlandish knock knock jokes in its presence.  It’s not aware of current events that are occurring at home or abroad. It doesn’t offer a neutral ear to a healthy debate while sitting over a plateful of mom’s Rachael Ray wannabe cooking.  It’s not possessive of a well-rounded personality; a stick in the mud and yet does not have to register as Republican.  Heck, it probably can’t even name the members of the family that live in the same household of the once well-known family table.  At one Easter dinner, it recalled putting on a name tag that read, “Hello, My Name is ‘The Family Table’” and introduced to everybody as such.   In an era of bank bailouts and closures, many family tables are posting up signs that read, “Will work for food…God Bless!”  Ask this home furnishing if the “Summer of Recovery” regarding the upswing of the economy out of a recession is in effect.   It is not uncommon to find family tables having to moonlight their talents elsewhere in order to make ends meet; much less make a buck period.  You think your days are long?  Try sitting in the dining room drumming your fingers and feeling the dust settling on your face due to pure boredom.  A written statement to the keeper of the house was once found on a legal sized tablet resting on the tablecloth:  The bowl of plastic fruit that you have as my centerfold to decorate me is the most hideous thing since watching Reba’s sitcom on Lifetime I have ever been in contact with in all my days as a junk inbox.   You probably thought that it was going to be a suicide note, but counseling has had a resting ripple effect on its life.  So, sit down to it.  Read it its rights.  Don’t wait for it to go postal on a 30 second “The More You Know” ad before you make your first move.