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Teenager Dreading Another Year at "Kids' Table" BELLING, Kan. (DPI) - For as long as he can remember, Shane Andrews has spent Thanksgiving dinner segregated from the adults. From ages 5 to 10, he found this arrangement not only acceptable, but preferable to sitting at the large table with boring conversation and hard-to-reach salt shakers. But at 17, he said in a recent interview, he finds the undersized chairs and mashed potato fights at the kids' table physically and emotionally disturbing. "When I was about 8, it used to be great when my older brother and my cousins were at the table with me," said Andrews. "We would mock our parents and put black olives on all our fingers. Now they've all moved up to the adult table, moved away, or have Thanksgiving dinner with their spouses. Now I'm the only one at this table who's allowed to use a knife. And I mostly use it to cut the other kids' turkey and ham." With seating limited to 12 adults at the large table, seniority dictates when a family member moves up. And like clockwork, each year exactly 12 family members older than Andrews arrive. "Sure, I'd love to have him sitting with us," said Leonard Andrews, Shane's father. "I thought this might be his year when Uncle Bernie had that massive stroke last month. But unfortunately for Shane, ol' Bernie regained the use of his right arm and decided he's going to show up. At 86, Grandma Fran is probably his best shot for next year." With a 10-year age difference between him and the next-oldest person at the table, the troubled teen finds the conversation to range from boring to downright ridiculous. "I'm in the process of studying for my SATs and choosing a college soon," said Andrews. "Talking about pet frogs and Nickelodeon's Slime Time for an hour doesn't exactly put me in a thankful mood. Although I do agree that SpongeBob SquarePants rocks." Andrews' loss is his younger relatives' gain. "We love it when Shane sits with us," said his second cousin Bailey Andrews, 7. Another cousin concurred."He can burp the alphabet up to 'Q,' and it's super-funny when his chair breaks while he's eating," said Tyler Schiff, 5. "We always learn new bad words from him when that happens." Andrews looks forward to the day when he can marry a domineering woman who will force him to have Thanksgiving dinner with her parents every year and bring an end to his annual degradation. But until then, he said, he'll make the most of his current situation. "This year I'm getting into the liquor cabinet before dinner starts," he said. "That's the great thing about those non-spill Sippy Cups. No one knows what you have in there." (Reported by Buddy Fisher)

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