a most glamorous calling

"Raised by a single working mother who hardly had the time or emotional capacity for the youngest of four, my father grew up without much supervision. His older siblings Gayle and David were ten and eleven years old, respectively, and already out of the house by the time he reached elementary school. Ron, who was six years his senior, perpetuated the abuses he'd endured onto my father, boxing him into unconsciousness and slipping him tabs of acid when my father was only nine, just to see what would happen.

"A predictably troubled adolescence followed, culminating in his arrest, rehab, and a handful of relapses thereafter while he worked as an exterminator in his early twenties. It was his fortuitous move abroad that ultimately saved him. If this were my father's memoir, it'd probably be titled The Greatest Used Car Salesman in the World. More than thirty years later, nothing excites him more than talking about his years on the military base, working his way through the ranks of the company in Misawa, Heidelberg, and Seoul. For a man who came from nothing, life as a used car salesman abroad was a most glamorous calling."

~~ from Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner