A day in the life of an ordinary family is complicated by secret thoughts and feelings as everyone occupies themselves with the task of watching the others.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

A young girl works to impress her highly critical parents and submits to a terrible fate as she struggles to meet their impossible standards.

A working class man who wants his children to have everything their rich friends have purchases "Semplica Girls" — girls formerly living in poverty who sign contracts to hang as ornaments in people's yards — for his older daughter's birthday. When his younger daughter frees the Semplica Girls, the family is plunged into financial disaster.

A handsome seventeen-year-old boy coincidentally meets his girlfriend at the vacation home of a rich neighbor and tries to persuade her to live life at his pace.

A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

Though most of a prep school's students are away for the long weekend, a few boys stay behind at the dorms and are invited to dinner with a wealthy boy and his stepmother. At the dinner, the stepmother's attitude and appearance are just as alluring as the food, but the wealthy student acts strange and detached the whole evening.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

An ordinary man gets an inch and a half of mention in the newspaper after stumbling into a low stakes rescue — and the small bit of fame sends him spiraling down a dark, egotistical path.

A middle aged upper class woman and her family live in an upscale neighborhood. The family's laughter turns malicious when they cannot distinguish between what is comical and what is horrendous and increasingly find amusement at the expense of others.