On Assholes and Affability

Don’t be a jerk; but also don’t be a doormat.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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”.