INWhen I was a kid, my father would invite neighborhood families over to his house for the evening. While other families would just play card games or board games, my father would come up with the idea of rocking the table halfway through the evening to give them something else to do.
The night I remember best was when I was about 7 years aged. It was decided that I would rock the table with him. The table we used was in the dining room. It was a very vast cherry wood table that seated 12 people. As we were a family of 10, we lived in a vast 5 bedroom house on 40 acres of land, all the rooms were very vast and the dining room was no exception.
That night we moved all the chairs away from the wall so they were out of the way and then moved the table to the middle of the room. I stood at one end of the table with my hands on the table about elbow length from the end of the table, not touching it with my body, my father stood at the other end and also put his hands on the table about elbow length or more, also not touching the table except with his hands. It was quite in the room because my father told me to clear my mind and just think in circles “if someone is here rock the table” which is what I did. It was snail-paced at first but the table moved a little as if someone was pushing it, as if someone was getting up from the chair. Then the table started to rise from the floor on the side of my father's room. I might add that there was no way I could make it tilt towards me, and since he only had his hands on the table, there was no way he could do it either… He began asking questions that were answered by yes or no, he said if the answer was no, rock once, if yes, rock twice. This question and answer only continued until he thought it would be fun to see if we could get them to stand the table on one leg and walk around in circles on that one leg… he asked if they would do that for us tonight… The answer to that question was a shocking yes.
The table started rocking back and forth really strenuous for a few seconds until it got so high that my dad had to walk to the side of the table to keep his hands on it. He leaned on the two legs on my side and stayed there for 2-3 seconds, then he leaned over to one of the legs and stayed there for a second or two, then he started to slowly spin, we had to walk around with him to keep our hands on him, at first he just walked and then I had to run to keep up with him! Needless to say the neighbors who came over were horrified by what they saw because my dad had never done anything more than apply his hands on a table. And they knew there was no way I was going to do what they saw. The table was spinning too speedy for us to keep up with so I lost sight of him and let him go and he fell on all four legs and just stood there. I can still see the look on my stepmother's face as she looked at the table to make sure everything was okay after what he had done…
That was the only time I agreed to rock the table with my father, with the people from the neighborhood at home. Because it put me at a disadvantage, to put it mildly, with the kids I went to school with.
