Jordan Mears

I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me so I can say this is the way that I used to be.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

my friend is a great writer. @jledwardsIII
https://t.co/ATNtMbQaeN

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

I wish you could know me. I would I could know you much more sometimes.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

@seansheim https://t.co/3GdfEcSg1L

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

i'm with my best friend dan now.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

this ain't the same team I've been subject to watching all season.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

Cuz if I never see you again, you can be anything I want.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

@ZackCugini And 12-yr old me ate up every second of it.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

@Phil_Friend smh

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

My kids are super into the spiderverse movies right now and it just makes me even more mad that they left the second one on that cliffhanger and then decided to delay the third one. Bright side is my kids will probably be the right age to watch it by the time it comes out.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

Parenting first. Just got vomited on in my own bed by my child. Went to clean it up and take him back to his room and discovered he had already thrown up all over my other child as well who was sound asleep.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

@JLEdwardsIII might as well just put me in there.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

Too burrito brained to winter soldier today.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

@Phil_Friend SPECIAL club.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

Eenie Meenie by Justin Bieber & Sean Kingston is a beautiful work of art.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

I have one sided passive aggressive beef with my neighbor. Every time I clear snow I do the whole section of sidewalk between our driveways. He only ever does his half.

[Jonah Wilson @JonahWilson__]

Fears going at Izzo in the huddle, Izzo looking to the left and smiling. This is Spartan basketball.

[Jordan Mears @jlmears]

I Celebrate the Day by Relient K should be a Christmas classic.