When I was a child, my father would invite neighborhood families to the house for the evening. Where other families would just play games like cards or board games, my father would come up with the idea of rocking the table about half way thought the evening just to have something different to do.
The night that I remember most clearly was when I was about 7 years old it was decided that I would rock the table with him. The table we would use was the dinning room table. This table was a very large cherry wood table that set 12. As we where a family of 10 We lived in a large 5 bedroom house on 40 acres of property, the rooms were all very large and the dinning room was no exception.
That night we put all the chairs back against the wall to have them out of the way then moved the table to the middle of the room. I was standing at one end of the table with my palms on the table at about elbow length from the end of the table with my body not touching it, my father stood at the other end and also put his hands on the table at elbows length or more onto the table also where he in no way touched the table other than just the palms of his hands. It was quite in the room as my dad told me to clear my mind and only think over and over again "if there is someone here rock the table" that's what I did. It was slow at first but the table kind of moved just a little bit like some one was pushing against it as if they were getting up from a chair. Then the table started raising up off the floor from my father's side of the room I might add there was no way that I could have done this to have it tip towards me and with him only having his palms on the table there was no way that he could do it either... He started to ask questions that would be yes and no answers he said if it's No, rock one time, if it's Yes, rock two times. This question and answers only went on till he thought it would be fun to see if we could get them to put the table up on one leg and go around in a circle on that one leg... he asked if they would do that for us tonight... The answer to that question was a bone jarring, Yes.
The table started rocking back and forth very hard for just a few seconds till it got up so far that my dad had to move to the side of the table to keep his hands on it. It was tipped up on the two legs on my side and stayed that way for all of 2-3 seconds then tipped up onto one of those legs and stood that way for a second or two and then started to turn slowly we had to walk around with it to keep our hands on it, at first it was just walking, then I had to run to keep up with it! Needless to say the neighbors that had come to the house were terrified of what they were seeing as never once did my father have anything more in contact with the table then the palms of his hands. And they knew that there was no way that I could have done what they were seeing. The table was going to fast for us to keep up and I lost hold of it and let go and it came down on all four legs and just stood still, I can still see my step mother's face when she looked at her table to make sure it was ok after what it had been put though...
That was the only time I ever agreed to rock the table with my father with people from the neighborhood at the house. As that kind of put me at a disadvantage to say the least with the kids I went to school with.
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