Gemotions

He stared at the overflowing recycling bin, the plastic bottles and crumpled cardboard mocking him. "Dad, did you even *look* at the instructions for recycling?" Mark demanded, his voice rising in pitch. His father, perched on a stool in the kitchen, was meticulously assembling a jigsaw puzzle of the Eiffel Tower, seemingly oblivious.

"What's that, son?" his father mumbled, squinting at a tiny piece. Mark fought the urge to throw his hands up in the air. He’d lived on his own for ten years. Now, back under his parents’ roof after a failed business venture, he felt like a teenager again, dealing with a parental unit that seemed to have forgotten the basic tenets of adulting. The sheer volume of their trash, their insistence on using the same chipped mugs, and the way they left the living room light on until dawn…it was all making him clench his jaw.