a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you rang

now, repeat after me

how three people in my home enunciate the same five words:

MARTY	BELLA	ALEX
hospital	hostipal	noh
forgot	regot	noh
interesting	instring	noh
practice	prastice	noh
breakfast	bresfast	dink

it took me awhile to identify where regotted came from. i believe it to be derived from the word 'remember' as in the opposite of remember is regot (instead of forgot). witnessing a child's mind try to assimilate and make sense of the english language is for sure something to hear.

one hit i won't be taking for the team

anyone who tells me they've had a vasectomy can be assured of my undivided attention for as long as they will answer my questions. i'm entirely unable to explain my quenchless need to know more about this topic, i just know to call it anything short of insatiable would be a mistaken way to describe my mood. last night i received my best account yet from a man who i will call, for the sake of this telling, the beef-eater.

first, and this i did not know, there is a pre-screening. the extent of this pre-flight check seems mostly concerned with making sure you don't have three testicles and that the two you do have are sitting in the appropriate left-right configuration. although, i imagine they would be truly interested in any number above two. and as for non-left/right options you have the very rare front/back or even more rare top/bottom alignments, either of which would certainly earn a note in the metal binder. and, there is little doubt that any of these unique scenarios would generate extra fees (esp bonus gonads) so this reality check works to prepare the subject for any special handling fees that may arise. the day the beef-eater had his pre-screening was coincidentally bring your kid to work day which means he got to answer these questions with a backpack-wearing eight year old staring up at him.

the big day has you laid out on an exam table naked from the waist down. they drape a towel over your groin area only there is a big whole cut out framing the part of you the towel is usually there to conceal (nobody better look at the naked side of my hip while my johnson is laying there lifeless, bloodless and frankly scared quite shitless). the nurse then partially knocks you out so you're awake but mostly unable to put up much of a fight or think too straight. it was at this point in the procedure that the super-attractive lady who lived two doors down from the beef-eater and was a nurse in this office, unbeknownst to him, entered the room. the best he could muster was to raise a hand and mumble the single word 'foul'. the doctor came in moments later and began. after the incisions were made he took a tool that resembled a crochet needle and pulled one of the vas deferens out of the hole, exposing it to be severed. i'm told that having your gamete superhighway lifted from its tracks in this manner produces an extremely unnatural sensation. i theorize this is the anti-erection part of the procedure, just in case all the random fumblings elicited any sort of positive feedback. it is now that they snip, burn and return the helpless tube back to its home. my mind envisions the ends whipping around like a dropped firehose or more appropriately, a writhing and injured worm.

they then sent him home telling him to lay on the couch with frozen corn on his affected part(s) for the next 24 hours. these were the last words of our conversation:

TROY
wow. is it hard to clean up all of that corn when you get up.

THE BEEF-EATER
you leave it in the bag, idiot!

TROY
oh. but, when you were done do you put the bag back in the freezer or throw it away?

THE BEEF-EATER
i don't know what other people do, but i threw mine away.

TROY
hmmm. i don't think marty would let me throw it out, groin-ridden or not.

and i can now check another fixation from my list. i found the account of this man's journey to be quite satisfying. thanks beef-eater for doing successfully what many before you could not.

i'll see your raise and raise you again

there is a game of sorts marty and i have engaged in since the early days of our relationship. we refer to it as THE CHIP. i don't recall who started it or even if it was an original invention. i just know it showed up one day and has been used 3-5 times a year since its inception.

how it works; each of us began the game with an equally scant few chips. chips are given when one of us performs an act of personal sacrifice at the request of the other. for instance, if marty were going out with her girlfriends and asked me to go i could, and oftentimes would, decline. if for some reason my attendance was important to marty on a particular outing, she could simply say my going was worth a chip. with the offer of a chip, it told me that this was, for some personal reason that did not need to be explained, an important matter to marty.

another thing about our chips; the offering of a chip has never been refused.

back in the day chips weren't traded immediately. one person may burn through three chips before ever getting presented one in return. this is not so much the case these days because these days you always got a chip or two you could toss on the counter. and while chips used to mostly involve family functions or events requiring shirts with buttons, they now take a much more pedestrian form. an example of a chip exchange today looks more like this:

MARTY (walking into kitchen where i'm doing dishes)
you got something?

TROY (laughing)
do i have something? sure. go.

MARTY
stop leaving your wet towels on the bed in the morning.

TROY
hang the broom up in the pantry after using it.

MARTY
done.

TROY
done.

and, people say kids complicate life. pre-kid chips were never this simple and painless. for us, kids have simplified our days down to the lowest common denominator of life; survival. and i'm not talking about driving a leased-suv and having the summer place in the outer banks kind of survival, i'm talking about the crouching scared in the back of a dank cave kind of survival.

clarifying points: the chips aren't real, like poker chips or something. they are figurative. no official scorecard has ever been kept because no one has ever thought to abuse the chip system. and this is not out of fear of getting caught (which you would get caught) but out of respect for the good deed it has done for our time together.

i have a dream, a dream i plan on making happen

shel silverstein's LISTEN TO THE MUSTN'TS

making up for lost time

some things i couldn't do in the house i grew up in:

take the lords name in vain
say darn *
say jeez *
say gosh *
or take showers during thunderstorms

* disallowed for their derivative nature to damn, jesus and god respectively.

perhaps i could earn an honorary title

i have a friend who once or twice a year sends me a surprise in the mail. these parcels always come neatly wrapped in brown shipping paper, the address written in his typewriter perfect handwriting. bella would sooner guess what her reward for pooping in the toilet was before i would come even ball-park close to the contents of one of these never-announced deliveries. and, for sure, no two have ever been remotely similar.

yesterday i received such a parcel. i can't tell you how this renovates looking through the mail. it's very exciting. i momentarily held the box in my hands, surprised by its heft, before setting it to the side to save it for last. i shot through the other mail occasionally letting my eyes drift to the magic box. as i said, i know i will never guess what's in it, but the childlike stir created in me is as pleasing as caffeine. after parsing the other mail i slide the box in front of me and begin opening it with the same care as used when it was sealed. once exposed i see the box inside is shiny silver with the year 1831 written in big fancy white script. i open this gilded box and find a handwritten note placed on top of the contents. it reads:

from the briefcase of every successful mormon. in case you ever want to read the inspiring text that fuels your newest hobby ...

inside the box was my very own book of mormon! this used to be his very own book of mormon because this friend, you see, is an ex-mormon which makes him a jack-mormon. most don't know that this descriptor for a fallen latter day saint is my most coveted title. jack-mormon. sounds rough. sound randy. sounds like a fella who would help you get your car out of a snowbank.

hello. i'm troy dearmitt. jack-mormon extraordinaire! it's so nice to make your acquaintance.

sounds cool doesn't it? while i'm on secret wishes, let me share one of my friend who sends the great baubles through the mail. he wishes privately that he was a minority. i don't think he has a specific one in mind. just any ole minority. i haven't really delved too deep into this ambition. i think i'm afraid of opening a wound that may stop my surprises in the mail and there are few things i enjoy more than those so i think i'll let him keep his secret all to himself (as well as anyone reading this).

thank you for the latest brown-paper man. i appreciate you and it.

like basketball with sixth-graders

and then there were seven.

no one will believe me. i cannot be beaten.

in memory of

i spent last weekend in north carolina visiting friends. the night before i was to return home, my office contacted me to tell me a colleague, and friend, had passed away. joe was a young guy, younger than me. to describe joe to someone who didn't know him i'd tell them he had an easy affability you could liken to alan alda's character on MASH, hawkey pierce, and also that his most noticeable and endearing feature was his youthful and mischievous grin which he flashed often.

joe lived life with a vigor seen in few people. one of his greatest passions was music. a year ago, joe asked if i would help him with the lyrics of an album he was planning. i was flattered and intrigued by his invitation. we would lunch or meet at his house to discuss all sorts of topics. it's the closest i've been to those infinitely awesome dorm-room philosophy sessions which without fail spun into the morning hours. life on other planets. the meaning of existence. what makes a good song. an endearing story. the power of language. the mood of sound. basically, these were conversations that would have been endless in subject and enjoyment.

i don't have a lot of experience with death. and by a lot i mean any. joe is the first person i've known who has died. while i'm fortunate to have been spared all of these years, i feel entirely ill-prepared for the emotions i'm experiencing. the only absolute i know is i will miss seeing joe sitting across from me flashing the smile i came to know him by.

american lit, bella-style

bella likes books. she will often sit around the house or on the front porch with her head in one of the books out of the family library. obviously she can't read yet but watching her you wouldn't know this given the way she moves her finger along the lines of text and how she turns the pages in appropriate measures. many a passerby has stopped while bella is sitting on the stoop with a hefty tome in her lap and me mowing the lawn to ask if that little girl is reading that book. my reply, why the hell wouldn't she be?

she mostly reads out loud so any around may enjoy the story as well. i will say with parent-like conviction that there's nothing quite like a bella-reading. if she's enjoying a nancy drew, she may rename her colleen. and if nancy, or rather colleen, runs into some bad guys it's not that unusual for her to be set on fire. but since she's the star and smart and strong, she knows to jump into a conveniently ever-present pool of water thus extinguishing the flames. and then, as with all good adolescent fiction, a bursting can of whoop-ass gets opened up on the dastardly saps who chose, unwisely, to set poor nancy, uhm, colleen, on fire in the first place.

just some woman's hunk of eye candy

these days, as we all know, i live in saint louis, which in the month of august means i live on the face of the sun. in saint louis, we have an outdoor theatre called the muny. Thin When Tan Girl and her man treated marty and i to West Side Story last night. at the show's intermission when the lights came up i looked around and thought to myself how stinking uncomfortably hot all these people looked. when i turned to my theater-mates, they looked quite startled and exclaimed 'wow. troy. you look ... awfully ... shiny.'

is it my fault i have rich, moist skin?

speaking of rich, moist skin, West Side Story is my all-time favorite musical. it holds this esteemed position for two reasons. firstly, one of the two mormon girls i was hopelessly in love with in high school played a pivotal part in my school's senior year production of it. and secondly, this same girl would sing the musical's songs to me after school when we drove around in her family's car that smelled like vomit. (this mixture of sensory input caused a real schism in some of my brain's memory pathways later in life. fortunately for me, i have rich, moist skin so i'm not expected to be all that together, mentally at least.)