This tie is not for you, my friends. “Warm Wishes” poop emoji Tie o’ the Day is my naughty nod to the handful of people I’ve run across in my five decades who seem to have made it their lives’ missions to make jerks of themselves. I can’t testify to how they act with other people, but around me, they’re a blight. Jerks can be known by many labels— nemesis, villain, enemy, pebble in a shoe, etc.. They’re the bad guys in our lives, to varying degrees. Some are harmless and merely annoying. Some can create Category 5 hurricane havoc.
I know I’m not alone. We all have jerks in our lives. We wish we didn’t, but it’s a normal part of life. Some are even in our families. Jerks happen, I guess you could say. I know I feel blessed when jerks are absent from my days. I think the right strategy is to be polite to jerks whenever possible, but we certainly shouldn’t try to encourage them. We shouldn’t make an eternal moral judgment about their souls, but we should use our skills of discernment to keep clear boundaries between us. Jerks can be pesky, and it’s best to kindly avoid a jerk whenever it’s possible. It is also okay to try your darnedest to live a neighborly yet jerk-free life.
Tie o’ the Day isn’t meant to be mean-spirited. Its message is subtle. Unfortunately, I know the jerks who really need to get Tie’s clever message will most likely not realize it’s meant for them. That’s the thing about jerks: Jerks are jerks precisely because they are the only ones who don’t recognize they’re jerks.