The Quality of Mercy

He's a handsome, dapper man
courteous and unfailingly good humoured
quick with a quip, equipped with a
mordant sense of humour; good company
when someone of his ilk shares with
others both their sense of ironic comedy
and the equanimity of a well-balanced
personality. But not this time, though
his initial greeting and smile gave no
prior indication that he was on the spur
of relieving himself of a sense of having
had quite enough. Fed up: with unearned
entitlement, lack of discipline, of respect
of a sense of responsibility. He would know. 
And he blames parents raising children
patterned on their own lack of civil
behaviour. He would know, he grimly
asserts, since he is exposed to them daily
whining, demanding, impudent quasi-
adults attending university and querulously
challenging their professor on every level
draining his patience, impelling him to
consider reducing their grades. There is
no cost to empathy on our part for our
own last languished in a university class
decades earlier. And, as he hastened to add
his own are well imbued with the verities
of indisputable virtues by inheritance.