'It's the small things that count' read the magazine cover. It was one of those womens magazines that has a shapely young woman on the cover, in some sort of tight dress, her look suggesting both that women cannot look like her, and that guys cannot have her. He read the cover while waiting in line to check out at the grocery store, holding his apples and water, wondering why he always got behind the guy who had to write a check. 'Couldn't these people just go to the ATM and get 20$ out?' he thought, placing his items on the belt.

His eyes kept going back to the cover, drawn by the glamorous brunette whose very look confirmed to him that she was right, he would never have her. Yet he kept reading the article teasers on the sides of the cover. 'It's the small things that count.' he repeated under his breath. No doubt the article was something about how young single women should behave around their prosepective mates, things like 'He'll leave the seat up, but don't nag him about it', or 'He should get the door for you, regardless of the feminist movement.'. He smiled wryly, these things hadn't helped him so far with women. He'd open the door, hold it for someone, and they'd scowl at him, as if by doing a small thing of politeness, he was asking them to sleep with him. He'd leave the door alone, and someone else would get miffed that he was a rude jerk.

He wondered about the things that the article had, running through humourous things that could be in it, but finally the man finished writing his check with a crayon-short chewed pen and he put his stuff on the belt. Just as the checker was about to give him a total, he grabbed the magazine and said 'This too, please.' The checkout lady looked at the cover while scanning it, the look in her eye giving away her thought that he was only buying it for the pictures. He saw it, smiled, and said 'I get it for the articles. Makes me a more sensitive man.' On the verge of laughing, he controlled himself, and handing the woman his money, she turned quiet, and just handed him his change, moving onto the next customer.

'Ok, that was a small thing, and that felt good,' he thought, walking out the door to his car. 'You know, I always want to get these magazines, but there is this subtle dirty stigma in getting them.'

Getting in his car, he wondered what little things really do matter. It'll take a while, he thought, his thoughts drifting from the road.

The velcro tie wrap he got as a gimme-promo item at a trade fair 5 years ago. It still held his mouse cable for his laptop. He used that laptop all the time, and the wrap was easy, quick, and had a name of a company whose lack of a sound business model had made them go bankrupt shortly afer the trade show. He thought of the show almost every time he heard the velcro rip open. The show was in Orlando, and the smell of spring flowers was thick in the air of the hotel lobby.

The sticker he got from the front of a computer a few years ago. A new processor was on the market, and his company bought a computer with it. He immediately took the sticker off, putting it in his daytimer, his yuppie toolbox. That single sticker spawned a collection of what must have been a hundred different labels, stickers all over the inserts in his daytimer, on his rolodex, and in his office. He looked at the sticker, it's logo now dated, the edges frayed, thinking back to the all-nighter he had pulled to installed the equipment. The ozone smell of the computer lab, the chilled air, and he was back there again, just by looking at it.

The cassette tape paused between songs, and he could hear a clicking noise, a magnetic pulse on the tape, only audible between songs. He laughed at it, every one of his tapes had it. Caused by a cheap stereo he had purchased maybe 10 years ago, every tape had a magnetic imprint on it, it spread like a virus to every tape player an infected tape was used in. He'd put his tapes in rental cars, friends cars, and every subsequent tape had the imprint. Some of his tapes were so bad the noise was heard during the tracks. Those were the tapes he had liked back then. He wondered how far the virus-like pulse had spread.

Not just objects, he thought, driving along. But other things too. Dreams, things he wanted to do. Some of the things you really couldn't call dreams, they weren't big enough to be defined as a dream, but still important enough to want to do. Important enough that when done, they were memorable, things good to have been done. Almost more a list of firsts, because some of them were common enough now, but in his past, they were things he looked up to, functions he wanted to do.

His first time talking on a cell phone in the airport. On his first travelling job, cell phones weren't even common yet, so the salesmen, the engineers, the people on the move were lined up at phone banks through the airport, looking at their pagers, queing up their calls. He knew that was the type of job he wanted back then. Now he had that job, and it seemed as if he lived on his cell phone. Yet, that first time, walking down the moving sidewalk through the terminal, calling a client was something special, a sign that he had made it to a point that he dreamed of.

His first time travelling for business. It was for an interview as an engineer. Halfway across the country he flew, and stayed for two days, going on service calls, interviewing with all the people he would work with. It turned out that he never got that job, but it didn't really matter, he still remembered those few days as clear as last week.

Sitting at a Starbucks in LA, having a latte and watching traffic, listening to some piped in music, the colours of the evening sky as changing as the cars on the road in front of him.

Looking at the lights of the San Fernando Valley stretch out before him, just as in the movies, the smoggy air holding a tinge on his breath as he looked out.

Such small things, he thought, yet so important. He had his big dreams, the ones of being an artist in Paris, of hiking remote mountains, of writing a novel. But the small things he thought about were ultimately more important, more attainable, and more memorable. He knew he'd probably never be an artist living in Paris, writing a novel in between climbing the mountains of Nepal, but doing something like eating at a cafe in Manhattan, or putting his hands in the Pacific ocean were just as important, and he could do those far more easily.

He got out of the car, and collected the grocery bag to head into his condo. Seeing the magazine, he knew the article inside with the title he had read was in there, waiting, but he tossed the magazine into the trash on the way inside, never opening it. It was a small thing getting it, but it had opened up a whole raft of memories for him, and tonight, that was far more important.