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	A Year in Review Can anything be discovered about someone by chronicling a single event from each year of their life. I cannot claim to know the answer, but thought it might be an interesting exercise, interesting for me at least. (page inspiration compliments of jason kottke, web extraordinaire)
	1968 My fortuitous life began shortly after conception. In that for reasons I am not privy to, I was not exactly the fruit of desired labors, but instead a surprise of desirous labors. Fortunately, the female of this duo was compassionate enough to carry me the requisite period and handed me over to be raised elsewhere. I have never met this woman, but have sent her my thanks for her great and kind sacrifice. and, one can only begin to comprehend the gesture of giving a baby up for adoption after they themselves have had a child. unfathomable. As a fellow adoptee was told by his nurturing mother, "you may not have been expected, but you were selected." Gotta love maternal spin control. Anyway, I made it down the chute and fortunately escaped the vacuum or other such inconvenience and entered the worldly fray under the name Mark Allen Lombardo. 1969 they called on monday and asked if the couple could come by the office on friday. of course they could come, they've been waiting a year. when the newly married couple arrived at the appointment they were led into a room where a baby wailed in the arms of a stranger. the shrill infant was introduced as David Lane. the man asked if he could hold the baby and was allowed. the child immediately became silent against his shoulder, falling asleep. the workers in the office left the couple alone with the infant for a short while. when they returned, they asked: so what do you think? we want him. you don't have to decide now, you can think on it over the weekend. we don't need to think. we want him. we'd like to take him right now. and this is how i got my parents and how they got me. it is also how i got what would be my third and final name, troy lane dearmitt. 1970   1971   1972   1973   1974 1975 shortly after moving to colorado (and after moving out of the motel we lived in for some time), i made my first friends that i can remember and that weren't related to me. they were brothers. three of them. there were two years between each and the middle one was my age. as it would turn out i would still know these guys, vaguely, upon graduating high school. we pretty much did what other kids our age did. we fell out of trees, walked up and down an ebola-ridden irrigation ditches and chucked rocks at one another at restricted construction sites. another thing we did quite frequently was play marbles. we'd lay like army men head to head with a small circle formed between us and 'shoot marbles'. some very complex and devout rules governed the game, but the only detail i can specifically recall dealt with the exchange of marbles, children's spoils. these tragically high stakes forced me to carefully select the marbles i would put into play, only picking ones i could bear to part with. and i would secretly pull them from the little snoopy-patched denim carrier my grandmother had made for me. once, as johnny, the youngest boy, prepared to shoot a marble i chided him for how he held it which was differently than everyone else i'd ever seen play. i commented, negatively, on the point. the oldest brother verbally jumped me. how do you know he's doing it wrong? he can do it anyway he wants. who says you're doing it the right way? you? i can hear these words, the voice and even the intonation they were delivered in as if it happened earlier today. it was a learning moment and one i think my parents tried to address multiple times but it just never took. never took that is until i got scolded by a kid two years my senior. i don't have a judgmental moment without eddie siedel's lambasting coming to mind. given his words rattling around in my head, it's a little bit shocking i don't have fewer opinionated moments. perhaps it wasn't the learning moment i like to think it was. 1976   1977   1978 This was the year I first experienced sincere empathy towards my fellow man. There was a kid in my neighborhood named Kenneth who was around five years old. Kenneth had this ritual where he would perpetually suck the thumb of one hand while tightly cramming the other down his shorts. Now first I should state that the use of 'perpetual' here can be taken in the literal sense. Whether standing about, running down a sidewalk, watching television or seated in a moving swing, he had one hand in the mouth and the other hidden away playing his private game. And, to compound matters, on some calculated interval, his hands would magically trade positions. I never personally witnessed the switch but would observe, after a blink or a turn of my head, that there was a reversal in fortune between his tiny mitts. Now the unfortunate part, or rather the part where I experienced actual empathy for Kenneth, came not from Kenneth's oral proclivity but from the reaction it created in others. If Kenneth ever tried to touch someone with one of his clammy and pruned hands, the recipient of this affection would shriek and wildly contort their body in an evasive fashion to elude the contact, myself included if not most of all. Now, because I'm not a student of the developing mind I'm not entirely certain what sort of psychosis such a reaction fosters in a young person, but am confident that its touch is both significant and long-term. Honestly, I'm not saying that I wish I was the one to hold a hand out to Kenneth in some Michelangelo like moment, but I wish that someone, not bred with OCD, did. 1979   1980   1981 virtually every vacation my family took involved visiting relatives back east. the drive from colorado to pennsylvania was arduous. my mom was a frenetic preparer, rushing from room to room with a glean of sweat on her face. my father was simply an adventurer, glad to again be tanning an arm out an open car window. one time my father bought a used car on the way home from work the day we were to leave. my mom freaked; 'i already have THIS car packed!!! we are NOT driving across the country in a car you just bought thirty minutes ago!' my father was unmoved. in his defense, it was a magic automobile; a beautifully preserved, 68 chrysler imperial, white with red leather interior and a funky metal eye on the center of the dashboard that would automatically turn the brights on and off at nighttime as other cars passed. i was, as with most things, quite indifferent about the last minute change, asking them to simply point me to the car we'd be using. once directed, i nestled into the spacious back seat of this great, finned automobile. in the middle of backing down the driveway, my father stopped, put the car in park, said he forgot something and jogged into the house. this was my chance to study all of the componentry on my door's console, because in my father's presence, such frivolous use a car's luxuries would not be tolerated. i played with the windows, punched the lighter, turned the reading light on and off, flipped the ashtray lid up and down a few times and peered into the book sleeve on the back of the driver's seat. the car was very well preserved. even i could call it handsome. while my tactile adventure continued i heard a pop. i looked to the door curious of the source. my eyes found the lighter. i pulled it from its sleeve and turned its bottom side towards me. the swirling metal coil inside the cylindrical chamber was totally pristine, never used. i thought it odd a lighter this mature had never met the business end of a smoke. it additionally struck me that it didn't burn red with heat. how unfortunate that a car this immaculate be saddled with a bum lighter. intrigued by the dull metal coil i pressed my finger to it. the wisp of smoke and hiss of skin preceded my agonizing call. my mother spun in her seat to find her only child thrashing about the back of the car with a lighter connected to his right index finger. sadly, when my father sold that automobile many years later he could not add 'driver side rear lighter, never used' to it's amenities because an oval graft of his son's finger skin was forever embossed on its dull metal rings. 1982     1983 you can't ignore the boy for ten years and then expect him to be your best friend because you suddenly want to take him hunting. he won't kill a housefly, i don't really see him firing a gun at a deer. standing at the bottom of our home's stairwell, this is what i overheard my mother telling my father. this is how my father and i communicated; through my mother. she wore her chagrin in a terribly obvious way but it never swayed the two men in her life. while she delivered my message, i could imagine my father gripping the backrest of a dining room chair, staring down at a cleared dinner table saying, as was his way in matters of emotion, absolutely nothing. in the end, i didn't go hunting and tensions between he and i didn't really go anywhere either. i held my position in this relationship until my first child was born. up until this moment, every parental notion i held was pure conjecture, a malleable, mercury-like ball rolling around the endless hallways of my mind, growing with every related experience and observation. on the day i met, touched and held my first child, the long-term construction period was over. a large collection of workers broke down scaffolding, collected tools and drove the bulldozers off the lot where my accumulated thoughts on parenthood would now reside. this is obviously not to say that the project is complete, it's just that people are living there now and work happens differently. in reaching this milestone, i considered how this moment played out for my father. i imagine front and center in his mind were the words PROTECT and PROVIDE, chiseled in unmovable, capital letters. i will say on his behalf, he admirably met those facets of parenthood. but, our disconnect came because he got dealt a child who wanted more than what those tall, stone words dictated and consequently to this day we sit across the table looking at one another but never totally understanding one another. and, i have no illusions that my tapestry of flowing cursive words will not miss the mark with one or more of my children, i just know i will confound and injure them in new and unforeseen ways. 1984 growing up at the foot of the rockies in colorado, we regularly received visitors and relatives who were 'just passing through'. this typically translated to lost weekends and agonizing drives through the mountains pointing out craggy cliffs, elusive big horn sheep and turning aspens. i recall my mother announcing one such visit from a third cousin to my father from oklahoma. third cousin! is there no point where you can start snubbing these people, labeling them as simple vagabonds and direct them to a nearby motel 6. and on this occasion, as if the distant relation part was not cutting enough, they had a kid, a kid about my age. this always entailed extra misery for me. upon arriving and coming into the house i met their kid, melissa. she was one year younger than me and was fully embracing this newish madonna thing. i mean she looked just like her. well, except for her face, and hair, and adolescent body, but the leggings, frilly bustier top and hair ribbons were dead on. my mother asked melissa what she was interested in. as i gaped at my mother in disbelief, melissa bouncily answered 'music!' my mother informed the junior starlet that i liked music as well and even had some albums in my room. why don't you take melissa down and show her your records troy. "would you like to come down and look at my records," i said staring down at our deep brown shag carpeting all the while. so the daughter of my father's third cousin was the first girl in my bedroom, the first young lady to sit on my bed and the first attractive female to ask me what that smell was in my room. as she sat there in her lacy girl things flipping through my billy joel, journey and styx albums i tried to do the math on what she and i would be considered given our fathers distant connection and if a coupling would be honored even in a southern state. i'm pretty sure she was not doing comparable calculations as she moved about my room picking things up and and putting them back down (not in the same spot) and crinkling her nose at the hanging posters as i stood against the wall like a militant sentry. the fact that i dreamed about melissa for two months after that one day visit disturbed me. and the fact that i, today almost twenty years later, still remember dreaming about melissa for two months after her visit absolutely terrifies me and possibly should you as well. happy nocturnal confessions. 1985   1986 my mom shook up our household pretty good when she began a new job tract with the centers for disease control. in a move to improve her career path, she entered an experience-based program that would allow her to get promoted within the government ranks. her first post brought her to saint louis where she began serving as a public health advisor, specifically dealing in sexually transmitted diseases. pretty cool, huh. yeah, pretty cool as long as it's not your mother we're talking about. a typical day looked something like this. while my mom drove into work listening to talk radio, some guy across town wakes up and heads to the can to take a leak and screams as the urine begins traveling through his urethra and out of his body. hours later he's in the free clinic asking why he's pissing blood and razor blades. a disinterested doctor would calmly inform him it was because he had the funk, made some notes on a clipboard and told him to see the nurse and then a field worker (my mom). my mom would then ask this individual who all he's done the deed (any deed) with over the last 90 days. this dance was usually the same, they don't know or don't remember but are too dumb to lie very well so clues to the truth are left for the enterprising. my mother was then tasked with locating the participants of this fellow's lucky streak informing the hes and shes in his life that they've had relations with someone who has been diagnosed with a case of the funk and it would be in their best interest to seek like treatment lest their funk grow to uncomfortable states. now, again, i know this all sounds fun and adventurous but remember, it's my mom dude. another fun thing mom got to do pretty regular was give presentations to little funk-free tikes about the evils acts of wild abandon create. she quickly learned that they had little interest in listening to this middle-aged woman who is my mom so she began enhancing her delivery with visual aids. many a night the dearmitt living room found my mom pouring though short stacks of white bordered medical slides, holding them up to the light before dropping them into the gray carousel. i knew to stay clear but guests in the home did not. one friday night some friends came by to pick me up. after jawing a bit, we were heading out, through the living room, only to hear my mom say "ok boys, watch those penises or this might happen to you." before any could protect themselves she would click a button and a photo of some unfortunate bastard's gnarled, pustulating, half-gone member wallpapered our east wall. at the sight of this manroot, tall as a circus dwarf in its projected state, the unwilling movie-goers would fall to the ground and wheel about like vampires looking into the eye of the sun. if she only knew how unfortunately sad we were to the fairer sex and that not even women in this advanced state of atrophy would give us the time of night, she may have spared us this conditioning. 1987  (added 11.15.2006) late in 1986 my mother moved from fort collins, colorado to saint louis, missouri in the name of a career change (as noted above). my father soon followed her, albeit to branson, missouri, to professionally play bluegrass music, an even more severe career adjustment. i was in the midst of my senior year in high school in a school district i'd spent twelve years attending. my folks were savvy and cool and stellar enough to let me stay to finish things out. this meant i lived alone in my parents four bedroom home for much of my senior year. a telling thing about me; i never had a party. the closest i ever came to a social gala would be a small wednesday gathering i organized and dubbed 'bad movie night'. bad movie night consisted of me picking the most ridiculous-looking horror film i could find on the shelves of my local video house. then a few of my best friends would come over and we'd drink mr. pibb and messily eat microwave popcorn. i should confess that said 'best friends' only actually showed up about every other week. and that these best friends were rarely the same people. i guess we could call this another telling thing about me. fortunately for me, i believe one of the most unfortunate events that can happen to an individual is that they peak too early. i in fact felt so strongly about this missive that from a young age i worked diligently to see that it didn't happen to me. and from the above few sentences i'd say i exceeded even my expectations. 1988 1989   1990   1991   1992   1993 I shared a three-bedroom house with two other guys. Of all the houses on the street, we were the only working-age people. We were also the only people who did not mow the lawn on a weekly basis. In fact, we did not even mow the lawn on a monthly basis. The guy that lived next to us had an old pickup truck with a camper on the back. His truck sat right outside my bedroom window and every saturday morning between 7 and 8 he would start the truck and rev the engine wildly for about 10 minutes or so as some form of apology to the truck for not having enough money to ever take it/him camping. On a day that was not a saturday a friend came over to pick me up. I let him in and he looked around the dankish living room, visibly sniffed and asked what kind of dog we had. I informed him that we did not have a dog but that I did have a roommate who ingested nothing but garlic cheese bread, beer, cigarettes and a jaundiced version of kraft macaroni and cheese made with iced tea instead of milk as the mixing agent. There was a weed in the front yard that was growing from beneath the concrete slab that made up our front porch. By the end of the summer the weed was taller than our front door. This door-tall weed was the extent of our landscaping and we all came to like the added charm it brought to our home's facade. One evening the saturday morning truck guy knocked on our door and told my roommate he should cut the weed down in that it was flowering and about to release its door-tall-weed-seed throughout the neighborhood. My roommate denied the request and said that he liked the weed there and was going to leave it. The next day when we got home from work we found the weed felled, forever crippled. Upon further inspection we could see that someone had tried to cut it down but couldn't entirely hewn the trunk, given that it had started growing bark to support its girth. Dan, the weed's main advocate scowled at saturday morning truck guy's house, said some sort of swear and stormed into the garage. He emerged a moment later with part of a broom handle in his clenched fist. He drove this into the ground next to the fallen greenery and resurrected the door-high weed which spent the remainder of it's days leaning against the front of our house and wearing this improvised splint at it's base. Another time bookpimp traveled 2000 miles to visit his old friend, me. Upon arriving he was very tired from the drive and I set him up on the couch where he slept like a giant sized baby. Upon waking in the morning he had small, red bug bites over the majority of his body from whatever he was sharing the couch with. He refused to stay in the house any longer and set me scrambling to find alternate accommodations for the week he was visiting. Once after showering I leaned down and peered behind the toilet at something that caught my eye. In the black sludgy mildew that covered the tile floor grew a tall and lean mushroom with a broad white umbrella cap. It is not necessary to reread the prior sentence. You read it correctly. Fungi was growing out of the bathroom floor unassisted in any way. After digesting this vision, I righted myself and stared in the mirror for several minutes and by the time I looked away, I knew I would not share a three bedroom home in the burbs in the middle of a retirement community much longer. And in the end it was not the drunken parties that started at 2am or the cantankerous neighbors or even the pause you had to give at the kitchen entryway as to allow the mice and cockroaches time to scurry or ramble their way off the counter after the light came on, it was this simple if not entirely natural process of a mushroom growing out of the floor in the cool shadows beneath our toilet. This and the fact that whenever the maker of the brown macaroni had to evacuate his digestive tract meant that you had to evacuate the premises lest you fall victim to a rancor so complete it left a palpable sting in the air. 1994 marty's brother was getting married in Pennsylvania. this would be the brother who is very close in age to me. this would also be the brother who on the same week i excitedly announced i upgraded my postgraduate job from unloading trucks to being a part time teller at a bank that he announced he had been invited to switzerland to present the results of genetic research he conducted at American University to some consortium of international smart guys. my news came on the tail of his, unbeknownst to me, and everyone in the room smiled kindly at me with averted eyes. in route to the ceremony, i traveled to Pennsylvania with another of marty's brothers who is not very close in age to me. he's the older cooler, funnier and manlier brother and i was sweating a redeye flight and subsequent four hour car ride with him. i know, what's to be nervous about? i mean he's only a doctor. respected. athletic. successful and able to whelp me with a flash of his hairy knuckled hand and i just the pasty guy with the concave chest dating his younger sister. eager to get him excited about traveling with me i tried several of my surefire conversations and/or self-deprecating tales. no sale. after settling into our seats on the plane i saw that we were both looking at this attractivish redhead forcing luggage in the overhead about ten rows in front of us. i leaned into mike nudged him with my elbow and softly said "you know what they say about redheads?" no what. "red on top, fire in the hole?" he was unable to contain himself. this was one of the crassest things i ever heard in college. it came from a hardcore southern accented guy named dusty (i assure you, i'm not smart enough to make this up). anyway, dusty would say this whenever he saw a redheaded girl. he loved the phrase so much, he mastered directing conversations to this point even when there wasn't a magenta-headed female in the room. so i pulled this singsongy gem from my bag of quips and it killed. i knew because after big brother had calmed down and a few minutes passed he leaned into me and whispered "you know what they say about redheads?" no what? "red on top, fire in the hole." each time he started laughing before finishing the line. and so it went. we had our very own knock knock joke, and like a couple of 7th-graders who just discovered the word shit or asshole we entertained one another with it for the duration of the flight. upon landing, a somberness met us. our private game had come to an end, probably never to resurface again. as we reveled in our special moment a shadow overtook us as the woman in the row in front of us stood to deplane. we looked up at this ominous figure, this ominous blazing redheaded figure and our faces soured. she glared down at us with the contempt of a thousand and one burning suns. we looked down, properly scolded. we felt and knew our shame. and then she heavily gestapoed down the aisle and only when we were sure this school-marmy type was totally gone we laughed our asses off. and still to this day my relationship with older brother is lighter and tighter than before we unknowingly assaulted mrs. angry red head but i'm sure we can all know, benefitting from another's momentary discomfort is long-storied american pastime. 1995 This whole year I had a job where I had to ask to go to the bathroom. Can you imagine? A semi-grown individual having to announce, beg and inquire to move his bowels. And you had better not be incontinent or have a delicate bladder (the latter a sleight issue I contend with still today) because negative marks would be placed next to those who made the pilgrimage to the porcelain Mecca on too regular a basis. With that said and after digesting this policy, I internally waged war on the culture around me, quietly in my mind at first, for this injustice and how mature men and women could be treated in this schoolhouse manner. Then one day I concluded that rather than toe the party line in a proper and humble fashion I would embrace their policy and make it known to all around that Troy DeArmitt had serious and necessary business to attend to. Loud and proud became my mantra and even after requests be made that I table my shrill calls to nature, I thwarted the overlords and shouted more heartily that my large intestine was full and neurons were, at this very moment, racing to my brain demanding a particular action be taken and I request, officially, that I be relieved of my post so that I may answer this biological necessity. Long after this dance was viewed routine by my workmates and superiors, I was on the victor's chair responding to said need when I became aware of a gentleman in the stall next to me attending to a rather unique and personal matter on his bathroom pass. Only after acutely studying the long shadows cast on the bathroom floor that appeared more like some crazed marionette show than anything did I conclude that my suspicions concerning this fellow's carnal deed were concise. Upon this revelation I flushed, zipped and dashed. After this encounter I greatly reduced my fluid intake as well as the size of my lunches. To the pleasant surprise of my management, the once daily episodes from the cube labeled Troy DeArmitt subsided until they became no more. No inquiries were made and no celebrations announced and most importantly, reports indicated a ten minute gain in production from that slice of the office each and every day thereafter. 1996 i once worked in a department that was a bunch of women and me. what's a bunch? like nine. i had to interview for the position twice because the first girl/lady to interview me asked if i thought i would get on ok with so many women. i replied confidently that i knew i would because i've almost exclusively worked with women already and we always got along famously. hell, some of them even baked me pies and brought me homemade lunches because they felt sorry for my bachelor lifestyle. i later learned that what she heard from my description was that i expected this whole troop of women to routinely bake me pies and bring me lunch. her interpretation cost me the job. but three months later a second position opened and this woman either forgot my earlier expectation or conceded to stay up till all hours of the night cooking me pastries. although i admittedly never received any baked goods while in their employ. i saw and learned all sorts of things working with these women. i learned what a breast pump looked like after it fell out of one of the ladies' purses. 'what's that?' i asked. 'it's a breast pump.' when i asked what she did with it her face skewered, 'i pump milk out of my breast with it.' when she saw me staring at it (the pump) more intensely she slowly slid it back into her bag and cautiously turned away from me. another time i rounded the corner to find a woman with the hem of her dress pinned up in her armpits as she tugged, pulled and hitched her waist high pantyhose snug around everything below the under wire of her stark-white support bra. this image would not have proved an effective advertisement for hanes. occasionally another guy would be hired. they were always given to me for acclimation because the ladies figured one tripod would be able to get a second tripod up to speed faster than one of them. much of my instruction included things like 'never use the word chic in this office' or 'audible gas is not funny here'. these lessons proved most enlightening to the majority of recruits and fortunately most of my pupils took to the imbalanced surroundings quite well. but there was one such student i just couldn't reach. he always called girls (girls who did not work in our office) babes, chicks, dames, broads, vamps or just simple hoes. he frequently tried to regale some of the younger coworkers with his sexual exploits and conquests, many of which began at bowling alleys or neighborhood bars. and, the one thing you never, ever want to do to a collection of strong, independent and college-educated women is routinely act like there are things you can do that they can't, unless it is peeing standing up, even though i've since seen evidence contradicting this early postulate. in the end it was his infatuation with one of our coworkers that sent him shoulder-rolling. he suffered from that all too common syndrome where grown men rely on elementary playground tactics to flirt. now it wasn't as extreme as knocking a girl's books out of her hands or even stepping on the backs of her shoes as she walked in front of you, but they were very close in nature. these antics mostly involved continually making fun of the girl, razzing her to an excessive degree. problem was, the target of his adulation was a smart, personable and quite funny girl and she was beyond such adolescent advances. for instance, this guy was late to work ... a lot. once when some rennovations were being done in our office there was a wall clock sitting on the floor. the girl, his girl, took this clock and hung it in a very obvious spot above his desk as a jab at his consistently tardy behavior. the next day when she arrived to work she found a bathroom scale hanging in the same spot of her desk. she was a little overweight, or self-conscious about her weight at least and this guy felt this was an equal and appropriate retaliation to her clock gag. he unfortunately was not with us much beyond that moment. 1997 One day of this year I drove across town with an art student born and bred in new york city who never wore bras or shirts conducive to someone who does not wear bras, not that there's anything wrong with that. After moving into my apartment building she immediately established the Saturday morning bagel ritual, which began and ended in her apartment on the first appointed gathering. I personally and individually offended three of the nine bagel guests and am not claiming sole responsibility for the gathering's short lifespan but did feel I was in integral part. The first time I met this girl, she was moving in and I passed her on my way down the stairs headed to see the movie Kids. She introduced herself (Alley) asked where I live (right above you) and wondered if she could go to the movie with me (if you want to). If you've never seen the film Kids you would not know that it is not a movie you want to see with a female you met 20 minutes prior. Anyway, Allison and I hung out from time to time after that all the same. Marty said she had a thing for me. I said she had a thing for everyone. Marty then said that I just liked hanging out with her because she wore these big gaping tank tops and no bra. I had no comment. I had bought a 50's style breakfast table (green marble-like surface with a double Saturn ring base, very cool, very hip) from an antique shop run by a gay guy named Claude who only wore shirts with the sleeves ripped off (Marty also said Claude had a thing for me. I told Marty that she had a thing for Claude and assured her that my thing was only for her - smooth eh?). Allison really liked my table, inquired where I got it and asked if I would help her find one for her place. An hour later I found myself in a car driving through back city neighborhoods at an alarming clip. People typically cannot drive as fast as Allison through downtown roads because of the number of stop signs at every corner and turn. But, Allison had a system; about twenty feet before each stop sign she would place her hand on the horn, mid-conversation, and leave it there until we had cleared the intersection. In her behalf, the girl never took her eye off the road or foot off the gas, nor did she ever stop speaking, even once. 1998   1999   2000   2001 2002   2003   2004   2005   2006

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