Children, if there’s anything your mother and I have learned throughout the experience of being in the workforce it is the value of team meetings, and having all the proper stakeholders together at once, in order to arrive at what might be described as an actionable consensus and that is what each of you are tonight. Each one of you represents a proper stakeholder of a well-established entity known as the McDermott’s, and though we lack the legal protections generally offered through articles of incorporation, we do find ourselves heavily embedded into the dreary economic realities of our current participation in this late-capitalist endeavor. Children, I don’t have to describe for you the gruesome details of our complex taxation system, nor would I want to terrify you regarding the intricacies of something as seemingly simple as the selection of health care coverage, or the indecencies of navigating archaic PEO software in the hopes of submitting a time off request. These are often referred to as the “benefits” of our employment. Children, if these are the benefits, please allow yourself the capacity to imagine the detriments. You have surely seen the weariness that has encapsulated your mother and I, how it’s frayed the edges of our relationship, strained our patience, turned us into lesser fathers and mothers, often misunderstanding each other in the simplest of ways, becoming distracted by the day-to-the-day redundancies and strangeness of the corporate environment. Perhaps you’re aware of the effect it’s had on our lovemaking. The utter noiselessness of our bedroom. The lack of visible intimacy. We have become broken vessels. Children, I put the question to you. Is that fair? Should mommy who birthed you into existence be made to toil endlessly in inert, airless, sexist, corrupt structures that perennially gnaw and eat away at her sanity? Doesn’t mommy love you both very much?  Doesn’t mommy deserve a better life? Children, what of me? Would you wish your father to drop dead suddenly of a heart attack, or a brain aneurysm, or leaping from the office of one of my superiors? What we are proposing is simple. Complete, unconditional, and total surrender. Children, what we are saying is your mother and I are leaving the workforce behind. It has no further use for us. We have quit our jobs and we are going where the wind takes us. This unfortunately puts on hold certain ventures we had previously negotiated, namely memberships into certain traveling soccer teams, certain orthodontic procedures, certain Disney vacations, certain Netflix and Hulu subscriptions. We could go on and on and on, but children please stop your crying because we need you focused on this next part, which there being no other way to say it, is for each of you to begin the arduous process of putting together an up-to-date resume and finding yourselves a means of income. Your mother and I can assist you in the correct formatting and structure of your C.V., however you will ultimately be responsible for providing the majority of its content. I have done you the tremendous service of researching a list of jobs you can put yourselves in the running for, a generous variety of options, taking into consideration the unique skills and talents you each possess, that we as your father and mother, have become so keenly familiar with and it goes without saying we intend on providing you each with exceptional letters of recommendation. Children, you find yourselves in the most fortunate of times. Thanks to the recently repealing of child labor laws, the burden of protective regulations that previously restricted your full entry into the collective workforce have now been tossed aside by the invisible hand of the market with joyous bipartisan support. The professional possibilities in front of you now are endless, from meatpacking plants to auto shops, from construction sites to neighborhood bars, all avenues to an honest day’s work are right in front of you. Children, bills arrive on a monthly basis, and they must be paid, and all your money will go toward the paying of these bills, and once you stop your crying you will realize the great opportunity before you, and the possibility that someday you will become what our complex taxation systems defines as ‘a success,’ at which time you can rescue your mother and I from an underworld of utter collapse.

Frank Jackson is an MFA graduate from the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s University. His fiction has appeared previously in journals such as X-R-A-Y Lit, Metratron, Sledgehammer Lit, The Bookends Review, and Shabby Doll House. Find him on Twitter @frankerson.