The Splendor and Wisdom of Edible Crafts

When he was bored, and maybe even when he wasn’t bored, my stepfather sat on our living room couch, flicking his ashes into a homemade ashtray and reading from a 3-inch thick, hardcover version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. 

Then, perhaps in an effort to apply this knowledge of his to the real world, he was known to drop terms like “defecate” on my …