Some small things:

• The plane back from Dallas was delayed. It seems a light on a control panel had gone out. The flight crew at the attendants desk were quite up front about how insignificant the piece was. But that due to bureaucracy the plane would be held and hour.
• We always make fun of Mark for showing up late for Jeng Chi (the best dumplings in America.) He showed up 20 minutes early to prove us wrong. Jake and I got there, didn’t see him, and sat another table for 20 minutes.
• I got annoyed at a waiter at  a nice restaurant because I could tell he put the position numbers in the computer wrong.
• I used the word emasculate as a synonym for humiliate (hyperbolically) and my father harped on my for half the day.

My family interrupts me. I don’t know if this is a small thing. It feels big. It’s marginalizing. Already when I’m around my family I don’t have much to talk about. We don’t share any interests, talk politics, or much of anything else. So my family tends not to know how to approach me.  Then end up asking me the same questions over and over again. So when I do have something to talk about, being cut off or sung off (yes my younger brother will start singing to interrupt me because he thinks it’s so funny) it’s pretty disheartening. Whenever I bring up that I don’t like it, I tend to get an eye roll, the brush off,  then told that I’m too sensitive.

Faith. Is it a small thing?  In my family it is. Do my parents support me? Absolutely.  But do they have faith in me?  They like to shower me with outdated and out of touch advice. “You’re trying to do a very hard thing.” No shit it’s hard. You think I’ve been sitting with my thumb up my ass waiting staring at the phone just expecting a TV writing job?  I don’t need or want your advice about reading some news paper clipping involving a writer or that I should go back to grad school when most TV writers are my age or younger.

When I talk to people and they say they are close with their family, I tend to give them a cockeyed look. I just don’t get it. Really? Mark is really close with his family even though his parents are divorced. He just get’s close with the new parts of his family. They like to hear what he’s interested in. I imagine they don’t relentlessly interrupt him.

I got back to my apartment and I immediately went to the convenience store to get some club soda. There was a girl trying to buy a roll of toilet paper. She had 60 cents in change. It was a $1.29 and there was a $10 minimum to pay with credit card. I told the cashier to just put it with my stuff.  Then I said some cheesy line like “It’s the holidays now. Guess it’s time we start doing stuff like this.”

She was shocked and insisted on paying me back. I insisted otherwise, then asked where her accent was from. France. I told her, “I’m sure French people do stuff like this all the time for American tourists.” The irony was lost on her.  She apparently lives in my apartment. Actually a floor above me. I woke up this morning with a note at my door and a dollar in the envelope.

It really is all about the small things.

— Jack out.