alex spent the day at a friend's house. near supper time marty called over to ask about the plan. the lady said they had no particular ideas in mind and the boys were still playing strong. marty worried alex would be upset if we ate without him so had the lady ask him what he wanted to do.

FRIEND'S MOM
alex. i have your mom on the phone. she's wondering what you want to do about dinner.

ALEX
uhhh. what is my mom making?

FRIEND'S MOM (she asks marty)
pork and green bean stir fry.

ALEX
uhhhmm. what are you making?

FRIEND'S MOM
i think we're going to have eggs.

ALEX
well. i do like pork and green bean stir fry more than eggs but will stay here and keep playing.

note:
while assessing his choices might come off as a tad rude, his choosing the lesser option to stay in the woman's home may make up for any prior slight.

last year marty subbed for three weeks. after the tour i asked her if there were any noticeable changes in the classroom over the last decade. she said, yes, one, there were no smartphones ten years ago.

now that she's there more often her time off is showing in other ways too. when the teachers were getting their rooms ready marty walked into the science teachers office and asked:

MARTY
does anyone have an easel-pad.

YOUNG COLLEAGUE
what's an easel-pad?

MARTY
it's a big sheet of paper you can write stuff on.

YOUNG COLLEAGUE
i don't have an easel-pad but i think i got some slates you can borrow.

upon arriving at anthony's school (before summer break) the mother of anthony's best friend, grady, called for us to wait up. after reaching us, grady and anthony exchanged morning "heys". then grady's mom reminded her son about something. to this, grady began digging around his backpack. after finding the item he handed it to anthony who offered his upright palm. grady dropped alex's small swiss army knife into anthony's hand and said, "i can't keep this anthony". after i apologized to the mom who moved on, i knelt down and asked anthony to explain why his friend had alexander's new swiss army knife. anthony looked at me guiltily. grady's family moved on. i knelt next to anthony to begin discussing what just happened. part of the exchange:

TROY
now what will make me happy anthony is you telling me the truth about the knife.

ANTHONY
ok. i will tell you the truth but it will sound like it's not the truth.

TROY
ok. i know you'll tell me the truth because that is what will make me happy.

ANTHONY
i was at school and got a package. it said it was from alex and to anthony and in it was the knife.

i think we can collectively applaud anthony's intuition that that his answer may sound a bit askew. after a touch of work i learned alexander made some trespass upon anthony, making anthony quite perturbed. it retaliation, anthony snuck alex's new swiss army knife from its nail on aleo's bunk, stuffed it into his pants pocket and gave it to grady at school telling grady he could keep it forever and ever. when grady looked in his palm asking "for real", anthony replied, "yes for real".

during alex's dad day this year, i planned for one of his events to be a movie. the day before i glanced at the movie listings and saw the film Pirates. every time we'd seen previews for this one made by the chicken run people, alex chuckled and tittered throughout so i knew he'd be glad to see it. after go-karting i looked for nearby theaters and showtimes on my iphone. i found there were no late afternoon or evening showings of that film (i even looked in neighboring cities - no dice). as i scrolled up and down the listings looking for a replacement alex, peering over my shoulder, told me to stop.

ALEO
what's that one?

TROY
that's the avengers.

ALEO
oh! can we go to that? morgan saw it and said it is awesome.

TROY
well, i'm afraid it may be a little old for you. and you haven't seen some of the earlier films that led up to this.

ALEO
well morgan saw it. and you can tell me about the other films.

TROY
i could but the problem is i haven't seen all the earlier films either.

ALEO
that's ok. i bet it will still be good.

TROY
what if you get freaked out?

ALEO
just blood freaks me out and i can close my eyes if there is blood.

TROY
ok, i guess we can try it. if you get freaked out, we'll just leave.

part of the reason i was so easily sold on taking my nine year old to a pg-13 film was, well, because i had been trying to see it on a six day break from work and hadn't fit it in. and this was the last day of my break. so now i'm sure you're seeing why it was the right and mature choice. the other good side to deciding to see it were there were lots of showtimes to choose from. this allowed us to go out to dinner (lions choice) and look up the characters of the film while we ate. it even allowed us to sneak in our book store visit (where he gets a $20 credit for books) beforehand.

as for how the experience went, halfway through the movie, alex leaned over towards me and whispered, without taking his eyes of the screen, "dad. this movie is really good ... and there's no blood." win-win.

after anthony, who is five, goes poop he loudly calls from the bathroom "i'm done" and waits for someone to come and wipe him. if someone doesn't respond soon enough he calls, more loudly, "i said i'm done!". whenever i am home and hear this cry i try to be the one to respond since marty has certainly wiped enough ass that's not her own in the last eleven years i figure any soiled cheeks i can take off her hands is deserved and appreciated. last week when i pushed the door open and walked in anthony groaned. i asked what was wrong.

ANTHONY
i'm bored of you wiping me.

TROY
bored of me? you should be bored of mom.

ANTHONY
but mom does it better.

TROY
impossible.

ANTHONY (exasperated)
dad. i've been bored of you wiping me since after the first time you did it.

well. i do apologize that you find my company while cleansing your feces smeared buttocks so unappealing. how insensitive of me to not be more engaging during the wondrous opportunity you are affording me. please accept my most humble apology.

if you're thinking a child who is five should be wiping his own ass, i'm of the school of thought that no one should be left to that task until they think a job poorly done is a problem. anyone who doesn't mind a less than perfect outcome, in my eyes, is not ready for the task. and yes, i do appreciate that under this definition we all know people in their thirties who, technically, should still be wiped by a parent.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. don't walk

in all the hubbub i never finished our topsy-turvey tale. i left off with me having knee surgery (see topsy turvey part 1 for the detail). so i had my surgery on a tuesday and everything went fine and well. prior to the procedure i asked what to expect recovery wise. i was told i would walk in and i would walk out. i took that to mean it would be like nothing at all had happened and that my life would resume as soon as the anesthesia wore off. with this understanding, i told my office i'd be be out tuesday and back on wednesday. the first sign this was not the case was the prescription for 60 vicodans they handed marty on our way out the door.

in addition to the prescription there was the direction to keep the knee perpetually iced and elevated for the next 72 hours. while the week was shot to three kinds of hell, on the good side of all this dour news, marty and i discovered downton abbey. while laid up and bored in bed, i trolled the netflix hallways looking for anything of interest. something took me towards downton abbey. i watched the first five minutes of it and hit pause. i called for marty and said she should plan on having lunch with me in bed as i had a show for us to watch. so we sat in bed, my knee wrapped in ice and atop four pillows, eating sandwiches and discovering a 1912 english village while our children were at school. possibly our most quaint and romantic workday afternoon since our college days (and certainly our most peaceful moment in recent weeks).

i gingerly returned to work on friday to begin the dig out. it went slow but steady. at three in the afternoon marty called. she said the principal from the high school she used to teach at called. a teacher had taken ill and they needed someone to fill in for three weeks ... (pause) ... starting monday. after another pregnant pause i noted that by her calling me at work and positing the question, she was expressing interest. yes. after a third pause in the conversation, i said i supported whatever she wished and said we could talk about it further that night.

before children, marty taught for nine years (at this same school that was calling now). marty then took off nine years. returning to teaching is something that has definitely been on her thoughts especially now that our youngest, anthony, is slated for full day kindergarten next year. but next year is the earliest we'd ever thought about her return and would have, in an ideal world, preferred two years to give marty one year to breathe and collect herself before returning to the fray.

marty was interested on several levels which i'm sure i'd botch if i tried to represent them so won't. suffice it to say marty's brain was above an idle with the notion of challenging her mind beyond innovating on what went in her kid's lunchbags or reading a new goosebumps book to her five year old. i get this need. fully. when i returned home that evening and saw how lively her eyes were, i made three points. i asked that she didn't start monday because the still-broken fridge was scheduled for repair on monday. i asked that she not let this sudden jump back into a professional routine, taint her notions of returning for real because she wasn't giving herself a chance to re-enter work life with a proper amount of time to plan and prepare, professionally or mentally. and i said, i could handle the kids in the morning but she had to find places for them, especially anthony, when they got out of school. within twelve hours she returned the call saying she would do it. fortunately, because of paperwork she couldn't start on monday anyway so the fridge got repaired (thank gawd!!! as post-knee surgery is not the time you want to be without a working ice-maker).

her first morning of work she left at 6:00 am. i woke up early to make her breakfast. as she ate i confessed this was only a "first day back to work after nine years off" treatment and she shouldn't expect it everyday. i also made her a lunch and stole a little note in there in case she was getting treated poorly by the day or the kids. then she left. after a short bit of quiet, i started prodding kids out of beds.

the kids knew my getting them ready was going to be different. marty is definitely far more accommodating that i am. she is known for making them pancakes, kraft macaroni and cheese, or even crazy time-consuming waffles. when they ask me for such things, i look at them as if i didn't understand the questions, which in some regards is true. in the early days, they'd repeat the question and i'd tell them to go get a muffin and yogurt. now they don't even repeat the question. they just look at my face and head to the muffin tin all on their own. progress! and, if i'm known for anything in the morning it is when i am ready and they are not i stand in the foyer and yell, "you're putting me behind schedule Dufresne. don't make me come up there and thump you." rabid fans of shawshank redemption might recognize this loose translation of one of my favorite lines from the film. my kids obviously have no idea what i'm talking about or who this Dufresne cat is, but they get the gist that i'm getting irritated and they best up the pace.

i wasn't too intimidated about getting the kids off to school. this is something i usually do on wednesdays so i have a sense for what is involved. but there was one variable i failed to consider. every time i've taken the kids to school on my wednesdays, marty was there, in the house and part of the morning. we'd really not gone through the drill without her. the problem stemmed from anthony's morning ritual, which goes like this. when anthony wakes up you will often here a stretch and a yawn. this gets followed by hearing the creaks of the slats in his upper bunk as he moves to the ladder. once down, you hear a quick patter of feet, and might see a flash in the hall, as he quick steps it to the bathroom. urination. more patters—this time to marty's side of the bed. then you hear one word in a very business like tone: cuddle. with this marty's arm raises the covers like batman might swoosh his cape and anthony lithely slides into the warmth of her space and the covers drop, engulfing him. this is followed by three to ten minutes of silence which is broken, always, by the same question: is it a computer morning. computer mornings are weekend mornings where the kids get a few hours of computer to start the day.

on the first day marty was away anthony woke, he went to the bathroom, then the empty bed, then came and found me.

ANTHONY
where's mom?

TROY
at work. remember she's going to be working for a few weeks.

ANTHONY
but what about my cuddle?

TROY
oh. i can do your cuddles while mom's away.

ANTHONY
but you don't know how.

TROY
i'm sure they won't be as good but maybe you can teach me.

ANTHONY
now i'm doing nuthin'! and i'm not going to school!

with this declaration anthony turned and ran back to his room, climbed his ladder and cried for the next ninety minutes. although to say he cried at the news is like saying i was merely disappointed when i re-injured my knee. what he really did was screamed for a full hour and a half that we wanted his mommy. bella, alex and i quietly ate breakfast to this upstairs tirade. as i told bella and alex to suit up to go, alex asked me what i was going to do about anthony. i answered honestly that i didn't know.

i climbed the stairs and entered his room. he repeated his missive that he wasn't going to school. i told him he had to. it was the only choice. no one was going to be home. he said he didn't care. i said i wished i could leave him but i just couldn't. it wasn't safe. he pleadingly said he'd lock the door and not answer it, no matter what. i told him i wished that was enough but it wasn't. he was just too young and he had to go to school. when he said no again i had to pull out the big gun, the one thing for which anthony seems to have no defense: 1-2-3. immediately after i said the single word "one" anthony yelled, "okay stupid head, i'm coming." and he did. he immediately came down the ladder descended the stairs, headed toward the kitchen but i stopped him saying he missed breakfast and now there was no time. without protest he sat down and i put his shoes on. he put his coat and backpack on and headed towards the car without breakfast and still in pajamas.

he sulked on the way to bella and alex's school. he sulked after their drop off and on the way to his school. when we pulled up he got out of the car still fully under protest and began a slow walk into the building. just as we started i saw anthony's best friend grady get out of his car. i called hello to him and when he saw us he yelled a gigantic, arms-in-the-air, ANTHONY!!! he then charged towards us and ripped his coat open showing a large scooby doo shirt. he said his mom let him get one just like the one he gave anthony for his birthday. astonished anthony unzipped his coat to show his scooby shirt and the boys happily marched into school arm-in-arm.

that proved to be the turning point for anthony and i had no more problems after that. in my second week i was heard to say things like "did you get your milk out of the freezer and put it in your lunchbag" and "don't put your shoes there because you won't remember them in the morning." which is really good news because after marty did her three week stint filling in, the school offered her the job, full-time, starting next year ... (pause) ... and, she accepted.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. misdirected

ANTHONY (age 5)
i've got a new chore.

TROY
yeah. what is that?

ANTHONY
rubbing your back with that thing you like.

TROY
oh. ok.

ANTHONY
and then you'll give me a allowance.

TROY
i see.

ANTHONY
i need more chores because i'm saving to buy something.

TROY
yeah. what's that?

ANTHONY
a house. for when i leave here. so i have a place to live.

this is how it began. good to his word, later that day he appeared before me with the wooden back-massager in hand and said it was time for my scratch. in full need of a twenty minute nap anyway, i readily obliged and took my place on the bed face down. anthony positioned himself by my side and began running the four wooden balls up and down the length of my back. having been the recipient of many a child's back-scratch, my expectation was this would continue for less than two minutes and he would announce he was tired and move to his next distraction. instead, he drove the object around my back for at least three minutes. then i sensed a shift and waited for the "i'm done, this is boring" proclamation but it didn't come. the movement was just so he could switch hands. another three minutes. another shift. this third shift had moved to both hands and he was over me like someone doing chest compressions.

the next thing i recall he was pushing my shoulder and whispering in my ear that my scratch was over and could he have his allowance. i barely managed to ask if i could pay him after my nap. he said sure and scampered off the bed and i went back to the meadows in my brain.

if anthony's new scramble for money encroaches on any child-labor laws i might have a problem on my hands because while i've yet to ask him for one of his dollar scratches, i've yet to turn one down once offered.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. unexpected

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. critique

best email exchange from last week came after i botched an online chess move with bookguy. i wrote: and his reply: obviously in reference to the recent troyscript, thursday morning.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. thursday morning

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. bathroom words

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. acting out

it began with a jokey comment made by a five-year old anthony to marty in front of me. he leaned in on her and intentionally said loud enough for me to hear ...

ANTHONY
i love you more than i love daddy.

MARTY
well yes, that is true right now but it will change soon enough.

ANTHONY (perplexed anthony raised up)
what?

MARTY (without looking away from her paper)
there will come a time when you will look to dad to teach you how to be a man and when that happens, he will become more important in your life.

ANTHONY
and you can't tell me how to be a man?

MARTY
well no, i can't because i'm not a man. i'm a woman. it's my job to teach bella how to be a woman. what i can teach you is how to be a man that women would want to be with. but it's your dad's job to teach you how to be a man.

without even throwing a brotherly or conspiratorial nod my way given this newfound bond between us, anthony turned and walked off calling for his ten year old sister.

ANTHONY
bella? bella? where are you bella?

BELLA (calling back)
i'm in the kitchen anthony. what do you want?

ANTHONY (yelling out as he walks towards the kitchen)
bella, did you know mom is going to teach you how to be a woman ... and dad is going to teach me how to be a man?

MARTY (to me)
that sounded a lot more innocent when it came out of my mouth.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. problem solving

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. timing

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. totally awesome

i was awoken by anthony rushing into my room waving his fist above his head. he moved right next to me, either not realizing or not caring that i was asleep just four seconds earlier. undeterred by my addled response, he instructed me to ask a question. the easy manner in which he did this would have told someone watching that we were ten minutes into a conversation and not that one of the participants was just pulled from a deep sleep. compliantly, yet groggily, i asked why he was waking me up and not someone else. to this anthony vigorously shook his hand back and forth a few times as if making a cocktail, and then stared at his palm. after a moment a deep baritone voice said, "the magic meatball doesn't think so." at this declaration, anthony shrieked with delight saying, "ahhhh! he doesn't think so dad! you lose." dropping my forearm over my closed eyes i retorted in a partially involved voice, "you do realize anthony he didn't really answer the question i just asked, right?" like with the sleep, anthony either didn't realize or care that his sage failed him. nor did he seem interested in talking to his real-life father over this mindless plastic bauble which, by my count, paid as much attention to the actual conversation at hand as my overly self-interested college roommate did back in the day.

as this experience, and volley of questions, continued i found myself ranking this waking to my list of worst wake ups ever. bella's cannonball into the small of my back has proven to be a real gamer that no one has ever come close to matching. while finding this moment's spot in the list, marty entered the room and after a pert, already-showered hello said to anthony:

MARTY (with a mischievous glance my way)
ask the magic meatball if dad is going to get busy today?

ANTHONY (excitedly to the toy in his hand)
magic meatball, is dad going to get busy today!?!?

MAGIC MEATBALL (with bravado and confidence)
the magic meatball says YEEESSSS.

ANTHONY (even more excitedly)
aahhh! you're going to get busy today dad!

anthony's rejoicing at my imminent fortune had both marty and i laughing heartily. and i may have been hasty in my judging of the meatball. he seems ok to me. but, before we stamp any thank you notes, i should add that his prediction may not have been as prescient as he led on because at the time of this writing, i'm rather busy-less. and i assure you no one is bluer on that count than me. truly. in fact, i'm miffed enough to consider a rebranding effort for the magic meatball to something a touch more accurate. fortunately for me, he already mostly has the appearance of the moniker i'd been toying with.

UPDATE: so after i posted the above and before midnight, the magic meatball's promise of good fortune came to be. my apologies mr. meatball.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dry meat

a year or two back i was in a large bathroom stall of a public toilet with all three of my kids. one of them had just gone to the rest room and i leaned over to flush the toilet. bella put her hand on my arm and said in an alarmed tone:

BELLA
whoa! what are you doing?

TROY
what? i'm flushing the toilet.

BELLA
you can't do it like that.

TROY
like what?

BELLA
standing like that.

TROY
why not?

BELLA
don't you know that a toilet can shoot spray from the bowl, like, twenty five feet into the air when it is flushed.

TROY (straightening back up)
uh. no. i didn't know that.

BELLA
uhhh. yeah.

TROY
where'd you hear that?

BELLA
at school.

TROY
oh.

BELLA
and just think if there is pee or pooh in there.

some things:

1. what bella doesn't know is that while i'm surely fearful of pee or pooh being jettisoned at me in the form of a fine mist, clean water from a public bowl disturbs me almost to the same degree.
2. since that day, i have never flushed a public toilet without thinking of that moment with bella (not to mention using an outstretched foot and turning away as soon as the flush begins).
3. also since then, i've come to believe that she (and her teachers) are right in that a few times after flushing the toilet in my office, thanks to a bright frosted window in the stall, i can see small droplets flying through the air in volcanic-like antics.
4. and, by the way, where the hell was that lesson in my sixteen years of schooling?
5. i will confess that, as a grown man, it sucks to have your eight year old child so effortlessly place more obstacles for your neurotic mind to navigate. she's exerted more energy asking to have the potatoes passed her way.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. the c-word

marty and i were breaking the tent down after a weekend of camping. she was on one end of our large eight-man behemoth and i on the other. we were making halving folds until it was compact enough for one of us to handle. i crouched down to flatten out my side of nylon. as i lowered myself there was a loud ripping noise. i immediately reached behind me but it wasn't my manpris that tore (thankfully!!!). it was the boxers i was wearing under my manpris. this was the surrounding conversation.

MARTY
did you just rip your pants?

TROY
uhhh, no, just my underwear.

MARTY
hah! what an old man.

TROY
it's not an old man thing, it's an old boxers-thing.

MARTY
believe what you want.

i think i just may do that, especially since 87% of my happiness comes from believing what i want. it's a magical skill and one i have savant like powers for. and how dare she call me old. i spent the previous two days riding the water chutes of the johnson shut-ins, and keeping my two youngest children alive in the process, and i even made a record-setting cliff-jump, breaking my previous cliff-jumping record. ok, so it doesn't take a lot to break a record that didn't previously exist, but it was still broken. that's how this old man strolls ... i mean rolls ... ok, no, i did mean strolls.

but regardless of any delusions or illusions of confidence i may have fostered during my weekend in the woods, they were quickly dashed on the morning i was to return to work when i went to clean my glasses and it physically hurt my thumb, hand and arm to depress the pumper that sprays the lens goo out. my (delusional) theory was that the pumper mechanism got corroded while not being used while we were away and i had to break through days and hours of calcifying and chemical-based buildup. no small or lightweight matter. i'm sure it was that. totally sure. and i'm totally sure it wasn't an old man thing. no way it could be that.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. beatdown