Life from underneath the table top is very different from life above the table top. When you are young enough, and small enough, to stand beneath the table top the world and everything in it feels so huge; when your perspective was far closer to the table leg than the table top and you couldn't see out of the kitchen window, even on your tiptoes, life and all it's contents felt infinite.
Things, objects, furniture, other people, they all seemed so much larger then than they do now. Like they have shrunk down into some miniature version of the memories that you hold in your head.
Your legs being too short for your feet to reach the floor when you sit in a chair. When that small portion of food you are holding was more than you could manage in one go. I remember the vacuum cleaner seeming like a monstrous beast that might come along and gobble me up if I let it get too close. I remember watching the water go down the drain and believing that the plug could suck me down as well if I didn't get out of the bathtub fast enough. Sitting on the floor was so much more fun when adults looked like giants from your small, floor side view. So was being small enough to sit comfortably in the washing machine. To have a head small enough to wear sauce pans as helmets. When no cardboard box was too small to hide in or wear. When you could happily run around all day everyday playing outside of the house in all weathers instead of staying cooped up. Adults, grandparents mainly, telling you stories about their life and trying so hard to retain as much of it as possible that you tended not at actually take it in. Stuffed toys being your best friends and getting dragged around on the floor as you take them along on your adventures. Being able to fit under the previously mentioned table top and having your own private little space there.
Having, not only the world underneath the table top, but also the world above the table top and the many colourful, intriguing, and sometimes scary worlds that your imagination could conjure all around you.
Sometimes, I like to sit on the floor; because that is as close as I can get now to seeing life from underneath the table top again.
