Parents to give their disappointment in son its own seat at Thanksgiving dinner

CORNERBROOK, NL—Jonathan and Martha McKenzie are officially welcoming a new member of the family to the dinner table this Thanksgiving weekend: their crippling disappointment in their son, Bryan.

"We would never usually invite our disappointment in Bryan over for Thanksgiving," said Jonathan, "but Martha and I have talked about it, and it just seems silly to not offer a seat to the overwhelming sense of failure I have as a father."

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Jonathan and Martha are no strangers to having their thoughts and feelings towards their children be fully on display during family gatherings.

"This will be the first time the dinner table will be full of the entire family," said Martha. "We have three seats for our daughter Claire, her husband Stephen, and our sense of joy that they gave us grandchildren so we can try this whole 'raising kids' thing again. That leaves one seat for Bryan and the other for his complete and utter failure as a son."

Bryan has a long history with his parents' disappointment. It started at the age of five when his father asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and he said, "I think I want to get a liberal arts degree, then take some off time to figure it all out."

"At first, we considered sitting our disappointment at the kids table," said Jonathan, "but that just seemed inappropriate – that table is already full of hope. No, my disappointment in Bryan will be seated between me and him so that it can continue to be the wall that keeps us apart."

Although Bryan and his parents' disappointment have been together for years, this is the first time his parents have accepted his lifestyle as a waste of oxygen.

"Bryan and his lifelong goal of making us regret paying for college didn't always enjoy such a special closeness," says Martha. "One time our disappointment briefly disappeared when he said he wanted to play music. Then it came back when he decided to learn how to play bass guitar."

The McKenzies will be enjoying a traditional turkey with all the fixings this Sunday, while their disappointment in Bryan will have its own side dish of sighs from under his father's breath.

Finally, a Canadian Thanksgiving special:

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