one night at bedtime anthony suddenly became very sad, distraught even. in trying to calm him down, marty learned that he was upset about a school assignment. it turns out that he had fallen behind in a in-class assignment because he was getting pulled out a bunch for other programs he participates in and as result he was very behind and even concerned that he might have to repeat the third grade. when marty told him that was silly and would just never happen, anthony replied: that being the case, i reckon i'd be a tad irked as well.

at a holiday gathering someone asked me how the kids were doing. the following stories spilled out and i thought i'd share them with those of you i might not bump into at a holiday event.

ANTHONY
i was approached by a parent at anthony's elementary. she introduced herself and explained someone told her that anthony might be a good fit for an equations team her husband runs. i told her that anthony did seem to like math so, yes, he may be interested. she said that the program was for older kids and that they had already started the training but it might not be a bad idea to get him in this year so he could familiarize himself with the process. i took anthony to their next meeting. the "coach" got the other kids working and said he was going to be over here getting anthony setup. the man proceeded to unpack a game. while doing so he started asking a third grade anthony questions like:

• do you know what the square root of 9 is? he did.
• how about the square root of 81. he did.

then he asked if anthony knew what powers were. he did not. the man explained and then ran anthony through some problems which anthony answered without fail. he then taught anthony how to play the game. after the session i thanked the man for teaching anthony and letting him sit in this year. to this the man said, "sit in? i'm going to have anthony compete this year! he's great!". if great means that in third grade he already knows more about math than i ever have, yes he is great.

ALEX
alex is in a robotics club. in this club the team gets a challenges to solve and then works as a team to solve the challenge. this year the team assigned nicknames to all the members. alex's nickname was "the guy who can fix anything". not too bad a designation on a team that exists to solve problems.

BELLA
bella is at a new school district. we were a little curious how she would fare entering an entirely new population of people without a history or reputation. two months after her arrival she was chosen as one of five female school ambassadors. these ambassadors are existing students who show prospective students around to interest them in the school. this is obviously a role the school's administration does not take lightly and for bella to get tapped this soon after her arrival gives marty and i the sense that our baby girl will perhaps be ok out there in the bigger world.

alex started middle school this year. for what it's worth, bella started high school, which means we have reached that unenviable milestone where we have three kids at three different schools. we were more than a little nervous towards the end of summer as the days left grew fewer with each sunrise. i don't think it would be a secret to say most of our nervousness was reserved for aleo. there are ...

aleo, minutes into his summer break.

this time next year i will have one child (bella) moving to highschool, one child (alex) moving to junior high and one child (anthony) never attending school with a sibling again. while i'd like to celebrate the maturation of my children, there are certain things about our current life i like a lot and will forever miss, like seeing my boys walking in ...

before marty went back to work, she took care of getting the kids to school. the one battle i heard more than any other took place over shoes, namely, where are they? i could describe to you the variety of places missing shoes had been found but (a) the internet does not have enough space for the inventory and (b) you wouldn't believe me anyway (e.g. one time the left and right shoe weren't even i ...

anthony's first few years in school, pre-school that is, were a bit tumultuous, mostly for his teachers. there was the time in the first week of school he switched classes because he saw something more interesting happening in the room they walked by than the one he was part of. since it was the first week of school it took the teachers awhile to (a) figure out he wasn't part of this class and the ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. slackers need not apply

i walked through the ping pong room on a saturday morning to find anthony leaning back on the futon playing a DS while a movie played on a laptop in front of him and a bowl of popcorn sat next to him which he'd reach into for a fresh mouthful when his game didn't require both hands. bella sat on the other side of the room, using marty's computer. the scene produced the following exchange:

TROY
hey anfer. nice juggling work there. most impressive.

BELLA (the quoted part being done in an exaggeratedly deep-dad voice)
WHAT!?! why when i do that, you yell at me and when he does it you tell him 'most impressive'?

TROY
because one of the things he's doing isn't his homework.

BELLA
oh. yeah. that.

i participate in a reading program at the university i work for. the program instructs all incoming freshmen to read a book, a book chosen by a committee of folks. the book is meant to stimulate thought and conversation about a range of topics. on the day before classes begin the freshmen attend a discussion group with around fifteen of their new peers. the talk spans one and a half hours and is l...

the last seven days floated more innovative ideas before me than any other week in the history of troy. a few you may have heard or seen as well, assuming you too are not enforcing a news embargo, but a few will be new to you.

item one told of "the coach that never punts or kicks off" (video) but instead runs on every fourth down and only does onside kicks. it seems he read this study by some harvard prof who has the math to support the approach, and this coach has seen a great deal of success from it. i'm confident i'm not the only one wondering if this is all true, as it seems to be for skill levels found in the sub-college ranks at least, i'm left wondering how has no one seen this before?

for the second item, a friend over lunch told me of a teacher at his kid's school who has his students learn the lessons at home via web videos (e.g. what is the pythagorean theorem?) and do their homework in class where, if confused, they have access to the teacher and others learning the same concept. when i mentioned this to marty she had heard of it, being in the industry and all, and said the practice is called 'flipping' the classroom. given all the great web fodder out there, cases in point, i can see this as being a highly profitable approach, especially if it means my kids not having to turn to me for help with things i didn't understand the first time around.

the third bit of inspiration i bumped into came from the mother of one of my former students. she told me that when her three boys were young they got very little television. she policed this in the following way:

• each boy would pour over the weekly television listing that came in the sunday paper where they circled two hours worth of television from the offerings.
• the marked up schedule would then get posted, like on the fridge, for reference. then everyone knew when they had to be home for tv, being the pre-tivo age, and the boys would look forward to their windows of time.
• alternately, and probably more importantly, they could look at the movie section of the same paper and direct their two hours at a theater movie instead of television.

i can just imagine the excitement and anticipation surrounding this ritual and how it would make special something that for must of us has become a completely numb and expected part of life. i'm anguished i didn't learn of this practice ten years ago. i find it beautifully thoughtful, inspired even.

the last item comes from my own desk. perhaps all the innovation happening around me moved me to keep up. the everyday problem i held in my hand dealt with alex and the time we spend together. it's not that our time together is strained, it's just not as vibrant and easy as i would describe my relationship with my other kids. as such, i sat down to reflect on this and inside ten minutes came to the conclusion that i was trying to push alex towards things i wanted him to do instead of leveraging one of his many interests. when i considered how i would feel if someone did that to me, i concluded i would think:

1. that the person was an ass.
2. and that the person might be acting a bit like their own father.

these two lines of thought put a quick end to that. minutes after this epiphany i called bookguy, a fellow i knew to be a minecrafter (minecraft being one of alex's core interest at the moment), and asked for some advice. then, minutes after getting home from work, i sought alex out and after the usual check on the day i asked him if he could do me a favor. being the helpful man he is he of course said yes and gave me his attention. i asked him if he would teach me how to do minecraft like he does. his late in the day expression brightened more than a little bit.

if a doctor's mandate is to do no harm i think a father's mandate could be 'don't be a dick' because who wants a selfish dick for a father. i wouldn't be surprised to learn twenty years from now that those ten minutes of reflection might be ten of the most important minutes i spent in regard to my boy aleo.

those are four examples where things that happen everyday were re-thought and from those re-contemplations, life got changed. these thinking organs we got are pretty dang impressive. so think. think hard. improvement is everywhere.

last week, bella became the president of her school's national junior honor society. i could spend this time going on about how proud we are of her or how anyone who knew me in junior high, if told i would go on to to have such a child, would have called the notion daft, ridiculous, and silly—students and teachers alike—but instead i'll just share the speech i saw days after the event, an event i didn't even know was happening.

when i asked her about what the role involved she described the meetings, what they talk about and her place in it all. when done and after a brief pause she added that parents weren't allowed to attend. she is smart!

her stump speech.

before the school year began marty went to school to work on her room. alex tagged along. once in the room alex asked if he could play on the smart board. marty said he could but it wasn't working. she explained it stopped working towards the end of last year and she had to have someone come look at it. alex asked what was wrong and marty gave the number one answer by non-technical minded folks to technical-minded folks saying "it was broke in the kinda way that when i tell it to come on, it doesn't come on".

alex began his silent rumination on the problem. in this studious state he is perfectly still. if you watch him really close you will see his eyes dart over the landscape in question. in this case his eyes travelled from the screen to the ceiling mounted projector to the computer on the desk. after a bit of time he went to the desk and started lifting and separating cords studying where they went. marty continued her organizing hardly noticing the quietest of her children. in time alex said, "you should try it now mom". patient and open as always, marty fired the machine up and began going through the steps. as it came to the point where the routine failed she proactively announced that "and this is where the projector should come on but just stopped working one day" but in the midst of that sentence the wall behind her lab table lit up and displayed the screen from her desktop. marty lit up brighter than the wall, turned to her ten year old son who was wearing a barely perceptible grin and gave him a giant appreciative hug, the deep kind one pulls out just for special occassions.

part one is over here

one thing i haven't mentioned through all of this is why bella is so ravenous to read stephen king. the reason is bella fancies herself a bit of a horror writer. she has written a number of scary short stories. they definitely are not what you'd expect to come out of a twelve year old girl, who otherwise seems as normal as bella seems at least.

she mostly has done this in her free time and just shared it with family and friends but one day she asked me to proof-read a school assignment for her. when i did it was one of her horror stories.

TROY
what is this for?

BELLA
english class.

TROY
you can't turn this in at school.

BELLA
why not?

TROY
because the department of family services would come here and take you away from us.

BELLA
why?

TROY
because this is twisted and deranged. i mean don't get me wrong, it's very good. the problem is its almost too good and thus twisted and deranged.

it turns out she was very excited to turn it in and had already talked it up to her friends and teachers. our compromise was she had to include an author's statement with the assignment. what she quickly penned to appease her stickler-father follows:

part five

MARTY
you look good in those pants troy.

TROY
thanks.

BELLA
yeah, too bad you chose to wear that jacket with them.

TROY
ohhh. nice one bay.

BELLA
thanks. i try.

MARTY
you can thank the bus for that quick wit.

for all of the hours bella spends in the classroom and on homework, marty and i have found the bus to be one of the most truly educational spaces she occupies, and especially on afternoons when she stays late for some extracurricular affair because then all the club and detention kids ride together. for her age and given the diverse world she occupies, i'd say it's near equivalent of doing post-graduate work.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. battle

that's the smile of a boy who has just started his summer vacation. ...

during the year i collect bits and pieces of information that i think might be helpful to share with my kids when the school year fires up. marty's insistence on a no-exceptions family dinner table makes for a perfect platform for me to subject enlighten my children with my sage counsel. a few examples.

we have been long told two things. one, that we have a certain potential fo...

the night of the first day of school, our dinner table hopped with lively sharing of stories and adventures. one of my favorite blips that happened that day took place at the very start of bella's latin class. after the bell rang and the sixth graders settled down and looked front at a man they didn't know leaning on the edge of the desk. he said ...

as the school year approached i visited with each of the kids separately getting their pulse about things. both bella and anthony were starting at new schools (junior high and kindergarten). obviously they both had a good bit of nerves. when i approached alex, his presence drooped and he became somber. when i asked what was worrying him. he connected it to getting a new teacher and expressed sentiments about his last teacher, mrs. mcwilliams.

ALEX
i just can't wait until i see mrs mcwilliams again.

TROY
yeah, have you you been missing her?

ALEX
yeah.

TROY
did you hear that she moved to kindergarten and that's who anthony is going to have?

ALEX
yeah. she's a really good woman.

the thirty pound junior high backpack


walking to the bus


anthony's waiting smirk


anthony hamming, aleo perfecting


proud and relived parents with their kindergartner

one day the week before school started, ninth graders could visit the school and walk their schedule to get the lay of the land. in this they'd meet each of their teachers for ten minutes. during one session, a student interrupted marty midway through her spiel asking to go to the restroom. she eyed the student suspiciously and then, thinking he was gaming her, said she thought he was old enough to hold it for five minutes. the student put his head on his desk. two minutes later he lifted his head and marty saw he was four gulps of air from puking all over her brand new lab table. she immediately motioned to the door, saying the restroom was down the hall on the left. the boy fled.

later in the day another science teacher asked if anyone else saw the student running down the hall dry-heaving. marty shook her head no (which wasn't a lie as technically she didn't see his mad dash down the hallway). after telling me this story i told marty i've recently been worried that now that the kids were older and less mayhem-producing i'd be light on stories to write about. given how lively her re-entry to work-life has been i'm now thinking i might need to start a second site to shoulder the additional material.

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.

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.

we got a report from anthony's teachers that while walking down the hall he bumped into a girl with his shoulder. after the girl reported this to the teachers they called anthony over an asked him about it. first he said he didn't remember it happening. they challenged this saying it just happened and he must remember it. his demeanor stiffened and he said to the three teachers, the teachers told us they didn't proceed after that because they were trying to stifle their laughter and couldn't press him further. before the circle broke anthony added that maybe he was blinking (and in his retelling he began blinking wildly) and maybe he didn't see the girl given his blinking attack and maybe he accidentally, gently, sorta, kinda bumped into her.

i don't know if i'm more excited or anxious to hear what these stories sound like when he's sixteen instead of five.

bella's class recently participated in a program called bizTown, or something of the like. for the exercise her grade (5th) got into a bus and travelled to some location where there were other grades from other schools. each kid in the class was given a job or duty to conduct. bella was the chief financial officer for her company (that morning she dressed up all business like in a long skirt and matching top - she looked quite smart got up so). when i got home from work i made dinner while bella sat at the kitchen counter with some homework. remembering about the experience i asked how her day as CFO went. she plucked a page from her folder and handed it to my as if i just requested a copy of some boorish report. below is what was on the page. i guess she got tired of answering the question, or any questions for that matter.



click to enlarge