Member-only story
On Assholes and Affability
Don’t be a jerk; but also don’t be a doormat.
My father, a hard-working and deeply intellectual immigrant farmer of unwavering religious faith, was a man of few words.
All the more astonishing, then, that one of the words that increasingly peppered his ordinarily careful conversation as he advanced into his sixties was “asshole”.
But only when he was driving.
Anyone who cut him off, or crowded him in his lane, or stopped too quickly in front of him, earned a darkly muttered, Dutch-accented “Asshole!!”
Then one day at an eye doctor appointment he was diagnosed with cataracts. He had them removed in short order, first one and then the other.
And magically all the assholes disappeared.
The problem wasn’t the other drivers; it was my father. His world had slowly gone fuzzy; speed-limit signs, traffic signals, lane dividers — they all became a bit of a guess, really. It’s a wonder he didn’t end up in a major wreck.
It’s a funny story, even more so because it’s true. And it’s an example of the old adage that if you meet an asshole once a month, that person is probably an asshole. But if you meet an asshole every day, you should go look in the mirror — because you’re the asshole. (Although in my father’s defence, he probably…
