Two men decide to let another man join in their intellectual conversation. They discover that the new man has bizarre beliefs, such as believing that the world doesn't exist, and the two men try to show him the error of his ways.

Anxious ahead of an important lecture, a psychology professor blows up after finding a photo of his wife's ex-husband.

A female novelist asks her friend for help with her story about a woman who has a reputation for her husbands dying during marriage. The friend offers a story idea that seems oddly similar to the author's life.

Upon the death of their tyrannical mistress, three old maids venture to the place she forbade them to go and reminisce about her life.

At a North American winter resort, an arthritic old man challenges a pair of young men to a series of physical challenges to prove that, despite his age and illness, he is still strong.

A young girl from a family of migrant workers in California is invited to her wealthier school friend's birthday party.

An American couple’s dislike of their German neighbors escalates into suspicion when World War II begins across the sea.

During the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, a young boy is left alone so his family can be treated in their town’s makeshift hospital. The boy tries his best to hold down the fort and prove his manhood, though the people around him make it more difficult than he expected.

A young boy wades down a creek killing water moccasins, despite his mother telling him not to since another boy in town was recently bitten by one. On his way home, an encounter with the snakes gains the attention of the adults nearby but leaves the boy confused.

In pre-Civil War Spain, a little girl witnesses her famous matador uncle become plagued by superstition and deteriorate in his craft.