“Capriciously angry, sometimes yelling [and sometimes hitting]” describes my father. I would not precisely describe myself as having an incredibly hard time dealing with my own or other people’s anger, but I certainly have a considerable capacity for anger, and had a greater propensity for it in my younger days. That, however, may be largely a matter of membership in the messed-up human race.

And yet, my father did have his virtues, and did genuinely care for me and try to do what was right for me, even if I did not sufficiently appreciate this when I was sixteen years old, and he was throwing a screaming tantrum, and threatening to kick me out of the house (in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language), all because my younger brother had broken my watch.