The Carol Burnett show -- Teaching little fingers how to play -- J's -- The Wizard of Oz -- Pen pals -- Commencement address -- Sister Wilda -- Christmas -- Tan -- Destination wedding -- Grandma -- Movies -- Village bath club -- Trip advisor review -- Irene -- Gay restaurant -- A chorus line -- Graduation

"Gary Janetti is bothered. By a lot of things. And thank God he's here to tell us. He's bothered that he has to play football in high school gym when he'd rather be in the guidance counselor's office, faking sick and dishing about the latest dramas on his beloved soap operas. He's annoyed when, as a kid growing up in Queens, New York, there's a serial killer loose in his neighborhood, but Carole Burnett is on tv and he really doesn't want to miss it. And don't get him started on how a perfectly planned vacation can be ruined by a bad hotel room. Start Without Me is for anyone who has ever felt like they don't quite fit in. For all of us that have thought, just maybe, those small, petty slights that life flings at us, over and over, are worth getting our feathers ruffled over. A book for any of us that have felt the joy in holding a lifelong grudge. Which is to really say, Start Without Me is for all of us. Janetti turns his acid tongue, and secretly beating heart, to the moments and times that defined him, when, as he writes, "most everything was wonderful. It was only tiny, little things," that stuck like a sharp pebble in a shoe. Deeply poignant, savagely funny, and slyly tender, Start Without Me will have readers wishing it would never end"--