Family dinners are all fun and good meals until that one relative gives their political view and a hush falls over the table. If you are anything like me, you may have a placemat in the dining room but it can feel like you're the odd man out. What I'm talking about is being that ONE liberal in a family of conservatives.

These political differences can turn any holiday dinner or Sunday gathering into a nightmare. From personal experience, here are 10 things that might happen to you at a conservative family dinner table.

1. Being told you will change your mind in the future

The truth is maybe I will but the possibility of future new opinions does not demean those I hold now. Who knows what I'll value in 20 years, all I know is that at this moment, my feelings and thoughts are valid.

2. Finding out who your parents/grandparents voted for

Yes, you may have suspected their choice but deep down you'd hoped for otherwise (wishful thinking I guess) and hearing it out loud was enough to make you choke on mashed potatoes.

3.Turning the TV off to avoid conversation

The five o'clock news comes on and you practically sprint to the remote. The last thing you want is an argument over fake news.

4. Questioning how everything could be Obama's fault?

Granted, no one is perfect but the blame for every fault in this nation cannot be put on one man. Oh, and the "Thanks Obama!" joke is getting old.

5. At some point, you get called a liberal snowflake.

But I believe enough snowflakes can cause quite the avalanche. *shrugs shoulders*

6. "I'm not racist but..."

Take a shot every time a family member says this. I guarantee it'll make the second half of the sentence much more bearable.

7. Or better yet, when a sentence starts with "Those people,".

Which is basically code for any group of people that don't look, think, or act like them.

8. Having tattoos/piercings makes your opinion invalid

It isn't a rare occurrence for the ink on your skin to be mistaken for impulsiveness and apparently make you incapable of having an intelligent thought, or maybe just a thought different from theirs.

9. Being elbowed for talking under your breath

And when a whisper of defiance slips from your mouth, it isn't uncommon for you to get the oh-so-subtle kick under the table.

10. And finally, when you speak up, the dinner table becomes WW3

It can sometimes feel, when you find the courage to voice your opinion, that the entire table gangs up on you. The feeling of dinner turning into a 12 vs 1 wrestling match is all too familiar to me.

Of course, at the end of the day these are your family members and no difference in political or social views can change that. Sometimes the best you can do is keep your head down and pass the green beans. Conservative or liberal, this is the family you are stuck with because unlike friends, you don't get to choose your family.