When searching through my email for a work matter, I stumbled upon this forgotten diamond from a fourteen-year-old Aleo. Yes, it may appear to have been written at academic-gunpoint, but it is still an all-net, three-pointer on this father's scorecard.

one or alex's teachers forwarded an email exchange he had with our aleo. it follows:

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From: Alexander Dearmitt
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:00 PM
To: Social Studies Teacher
Subject: Australia Questions

I would just like to check to see if I was answering the questions you were asking so here are 3 questions I have about the project:

1. For the structure of the government do you mean like the branches of government in Australia?
2. For where the gov. meets do I need to say what buildings or just that they meet in the Parliamentary Triangle in Canberra?
3. Also, can we have more than five links in our bibliography?

If you could answer these questions that would help me immensely.

From,
Alex

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From: Social Studies Teacher
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:10 PM
To: Alexander Dearmitt
Subject: Re: Australia Questions

1. Yes
2. PT in Canberra is fine
3. Yes

Cool?

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From: Alexander Dearmitt
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 7:07 AM
To: Social Studies Teacher
Subject: Re: Australia Questions

Cool beans!

Thanks, see you 2nd hour!

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here is an email exchange between best bud and business partner matthew and i in regard to an email he had sent to a client.

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if that email was a tennis shot, my coach would say "good ball".

well played matthew.

t

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And if a ball hits the back fence on a fly - what does your tennis coach say to that? Or maybe you have never experienced that?

mcf

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when that happens he says, "oh, i see matthew is joining us today".

;-)

t

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Good ball!

mcf

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i recently took my annual friends and family tour back east. this is a solo trip i've been making the last few years, or put differently, since the kids have been old enough to not overwhelm a single parent. i am fortunate that a few of my closest friends and a portion of my family are clustered in a remarkably small area, an area i did not grow up in (but did finish college in) which makes it all ...

the below email was waiting for me in my inbox when i woke on my 49th birthday.


i'm one of the few people that are giddy about getting older. given how simple and directionless i was when young, knowing more who you are and having a few experiences in the tank makes a huge difference in one's contentment and trajectory in life.

and fold in the fact that i'm in far better health today than when i was twenty-nine, well, now you're talking about that rich, creamy frosting slathered on top of an already sweet treat.

and as if all that wasn't enough, while knowing yourself is surely one of life's many lotteries, having friends who know you nearly as well, as evidenced by bookguy's knowing comment about my home-body-ness, well, that is just another one of life's windfalls.

i have a friend who is a work addict. how addicted? he lives in colorado. i live in the mid-west. he lives a few hours from some of the best skiing in the world. i live a twelve hours from that same skiing. yet, i ski more every year than he does. that's how addicted he is to work. (and yes, he does like skiiing).

now i am not faulting him for being addicted to something. we all have our proclivities. i only faulted him for what he was addicted to—a corporate job. and every time we would get together, this would inevitably become part of the conversation, as uncomfortable and futile as we all knew it was.

but after better than twenty years, my friend recently broke his bonds of addiction and left the company that transfixed him all of these years. he was a different man overnight. and not only did he go skiing with bookguy and i last winter, he also took us to a college football game last fall.

while on my spring break vacation this year, he left me a voice mail. he said he need to talk with me. his voice was serious and he didn't give any additional details. i feared that something happened to one of his parents. i excused myself from our company, went outside and returned his call. the family was fine but his addiction was being tested. a new company had approached him with a very appealing executive job offer. the downside would be he would surely fall into his old ways of seventy hour work weeks and no off days. he confessed to seeing the peril at hand but explained that it was a very good job offer, one that lots of people would want and even more people would question his turning down.

we talked it through and found a position that showed how passing on it would in the end prove to be better career capital than taking it AND that it would allow him to continue enjoying his current life that offered more balance and leisure. we ended the call but just as you might worry about a more conventional addiction problem, i worried for my friend.

he was to deliver his decision the next day. i wrote him the following night and asked him how it went.

DISCLAIMER:
admittedly, this following exchange will only mean something for people who are RABID fans of the cohen brothers' film Raising Arizona. if you are not a huge fan of that movie, this may not mean much to you but if you revered it like me and many of mine did, you will find the close of this email exchange to be a great homage to the film and mighty clever response to the situation.
and marty mocked me and my friends who could and would perform whole swaths of that movie back and forth during long drives in the car ("nobody sleeps naked in this house!") or even over dinner ("what now little brother?"). she said that memorizing the lines from that movie would never come in handy. with such a bad eye for future value, it is lucky for marty that "she's a flower ... just a little desert flower."

we are soon to go on a trip and will be staying with friends. we have stayed with these friends, like a good number of times. they seem open to having us. eager to having us even. but every time we pull into their drive and five humans, who all seem much larger than the last time we were in their drive, spill out of the car the same thought runs through my mind--oh these nice, poor people. marty never thinks this way. neither does our hostess. but then when the first driveway-exchange anthony has with them is:

ANTHONY (9)
do you still have the popcorn machine?

MICHAEL
uhhh. yes, we do.

ANTHONY
is there already popcorn in it or do i have to make some?

MICHAEL
uhhm. ya know, i think it has some in there, possibly from the last time you were here.

ANTHONY
ok. i'll see if it's still eatable but if not i'll make some new stuff.

here michael will pat anthony on the head and smilingly say, "i see ole anthony hasn't changed". i smile in agreement and look around taking in the lovely scenery, certain this is the last time the dearmitt-walter clan will be invited to this zip code again.

but each year the invites and feelers go out. below is marty's email to the family this year.
the mention of sydney refers to a car breakdown we experienced during last year's road trip. this debacle led to the purchase of a new car (chronicled here). but ten days before our super-trip, there was a slight incident with the new van. it was bella's 16th birthday. she and marty were arriving home from school and had anthony and some friends in the back who were coming over to play. while marty was backing into her spot in front of the house, bella, excited to run in and check on the state of her steak dinner, threw her door open which, while the car was still moving backward, caught the edge of a largish tree trunk in our font lawn. before the sick bending of metal reached marty's ears and marty's brain was able to signal her to brake, the damage was done.

neighbor jeff, as i was out with aleo, helped marty bungee the door closed with the help of the headrest. marty threw a bike on the carrier and headed to the body shop her go-to mechanics referred her to so they could start assessing things as soon as possible so we had a hope of getting the van back in time for our trip. when bella told me what happened, as marty was off to the body shop, she said she had good news and bad news. always taking bad news first she told me about the van. when i asked what the good news was she meekishly said, it will make my 16th birthday more memorable in the future. i can't deny that as it is sure to go down in the growing list of dearmitt-walter family lore.

an email i received from bella:



and in case you missed the grace wanderwaal experience, here is where it began

people have long chided me that my kids would one day revolt towards this website. the below exchange between bella, age 13, and i affirms my choice, thus far at least. and, yes, i'm documenting this here in case her position ever changes.

the email i received from marty after she read the family gallery posting (trapped) about her choosing to quit work and stay home with the kids. that was the message in it's entirety. no hello. no thanks. just, you write like a girl. i reckon the most appropriate response would have been: but instead of sending that response, i went to the kitchen and did the dishes.

with permission, i share a portion of marty's reply to yesterday's post. you only get some of it because parts of the message made even me blush.


this worked out well since when we met i was driving a 1976 volvo station wagon and living in the basement of a friend's family home, time was just about the only asset i had to give to anyone.

and, in the name of comprehensiveness, the culminating moment.

i have a friend (and former student) who makes iphone games. he works with his brother and they are a most colorful duo. every week they send a mailer out to their followers about what they've been up to. there's always loads of kookiness in their sendings but then again, who'd expect anything less from a group that calls themselves butterschotch shenanigans. at the base of a recent update mailer was the following.

and before you start, and if you're like me, i'll save you the trouble of looking up the fact the TL;DR stands for "too long, didn't read".
and if you're into mobile gaming, their ever-curious wares may be found at butterscotch-shenanigans.com

the director of my office sent an email to our young, female center coordinator. in the message he meant to request the following. instead his email read when i arrived at the office, because of the dropped 'contact', the recipient of the message read the sentence to me, asking what she should do. before i had time to respond a graduate student in our space who overheard the question said, "the only proper response is to write back and ask if you can please them one at a time or have to please them all at once."

this was far more entertaining than anything i had planned.

we received this message from a neighbor mom while anthony was down playing at her house.

i accidentally missed an email with more penis rhymes from big ed. one thing is clear, this is going to be one rollicking and meandering children's poem.

in reference to this post

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.

bella recently asked me to establish an email account for her. i told her that i would under the condition that her first ever email be sent to me. she readily agreed.

here's the first ever email she received: and the first ever email she sent: it's hard to not appreciate a healthy dose of self-awareness and candor.

my favorite get-off-your-ass email when i didn't return promptly on september 1st (or 2nd or 5th). http://www.eddiemcdonald.com

this week's capri confession spawned a couple interesting email threads.

excerpt from an old friend, buddy james:
my excerpted reply:

and then an excerpt from a new friend on the other side of the world:

and my excerpted reply:

and yet another email mentioned japris which are, obviously, cut-off jean capris. how beyond brilliant is that? and how surely are a a pair of those in the cards for me, to marty's future chagrin. and lastly, yesterday i bought two more pairs to backstop my first pair. why the need for so many you ask? because a lot can happen in ten years of daily wear.

a student of mine from last year forwarded me a link today. he said that after seeing this interview he felt it might be of interest to me and of possible use in future classes. i opened the link. this was the first thing i heard. after that line i paused the video, now fifteen seconds into a thirty one minute interview, readied a reply to my student and wrote, "that is possibly the single greatest line i've heard in regard to technology since i've begun working in technology."

i've never heard of stephen fry but after listening to thirty minutes of him free-styling here, i can assure you that three months from now i will be very familiar with his thoughts on technology and life's chase.

you can all thank luke, the most stylish student i've ever had the pleasure of working with for this juicy and marbled slab of greatness. and, send good thoughts and karma his way as he looks for a curious endeavor with a non-profit in the atlanta region.

STEPHEN FRY: WHAT I WISH I'D KNOWN WHEN I WAS 18 from Peter Samuelson on Vimeo.

a friend and former neighbor sent me the below email and pictures she recently happened upon.
this moment happened as i was driving home from work. a mess of neighborhood kids, including my two, were playing a few doors down from our house. all the moms were in huddles and sitting on steps chatting and commiserating. i pulled to the curb to say hello to the group. with the alacrity of a military operation, my car was besieged by the little ones (which was most likely set in motion by a war-like cry from bella). as suggested in the above note, my now-twenty-year-old car was (and is) treated as a playground apparatus. much of the coolness of this was lost on my children who climbed on my car in front of our house all the time, the same could not be said of the other kids who weren't allowed to climb on and in and around their parents cars so for them it was still pretty cool stuff.

i thank miss anne for (1) capturing these images back in the day and (2) taking the time to pass them along now. taking them in, and seeing a mini-bella and a tiny-aleo, reproduced the smile seen in the first image below. thank you miss anne.

and as a side note, i think had she told me she was in possession of a directory of images titled FUN WITH TROY that was from my past and didn't tell me the nature of subject matter, she may have been able to blackmail a pretty penny from my uncertainty. i guess i owe anne another thank you for not cleaning out the $64 in my savings account.



allow me to direct your attention to the girl in the passenger seat, who is not my child,
who is taking a giant pull from my water bottle.



the only surprise here is that drew beat bella to the top of the car,
via the sunroof of course.



that roof-spot is for a number of reasons, considered the catbird seat



i don't know what they're are pointing and laughing at,
but odds are it is not something in my favor.
good money could be put down on it being vomit or feces related.



one look at bella's face confirms that children come without guile or deception.
kids come to us clean and pristine. the uncertainty and insecurities come from the adults.



while i was fully prepared to do a lap with them glued hooey-blooey to all parts of the car,
a few of the moms thought that may not be prudent.

(and look at how close the side mirror is to completely capturing aleo's adorable little face.
how perfect would that have been.)

thanks again anne! you made my day!
you also made the day's posting much more colorful than what was originally planned. hat tipped.

after bella asked me about girls and bras a few weeks back and i had to confess ignorance, i emailed a girl i knew in my elementary school days who has a son around the same age as bella. it read: reliable as always, carrie responded, and in great detail, with the following: then days ago marty was telling me about a friend of ours whose daughter just got a breast bud and how that phase of maturity would be starting for us soon. i first asked marty to describe what a breast bud was. she did. i next asked marty if she meant to say that the girl got just one, and if she still had one budless side. marty said that yes, that is what she said and that is how it tends to happen. marty went on to tell the story of when her first breast bud popped, she was sure it was cancer and remembered specifically thinking about how sad her mom was going to be that one of her daughters was dying.

the blank, lifeless stare i gave marty during my breast bud tutorial was not due to a lack of understanding. it was due to an exaggerated sense of understanding and an immense gratitude that when it all began for me one of the two face-down cards i was dealt had a giant Y on its face.

i forgot that i had one more facebook morsel to share, which i do realize takes me further from my seven sentences goal. a friend forwarded a message they received from another facebookian they didn't know. here's a name-protected version of the message:


i fear i'm unable to share the exact wording of my friend's message to me because i don't think i'm able to sanitize it enough for this public space without it losing all meaning or coherence. the gist of his message was simply asking how one should respond to an inquiry of this nature.

as far as conversational mis-steps go i put this right up there with asking a woman who is not pregnant what trimester she's in or when the child is due. i've been lucky enough to witness one of those first hand and for however uncomfortable the next few minutes were, i gotta say i'd rather be dealt that (says the man) than asked if my child, who is not mentally disabled, is mentally disabled.

after pondering my friend's fix for a moment i suggested he say no, his child is not special needs and that after receiving her inquiry he looked at her page and wondered if she is expecting again or is merely struggling with the baby weight from her last child.

and yes, my mother did raise me better than that (she would have asked me to share this point with you).

and yes, these sage advice services are also available to you. and get this, they're completely free of charge. i know, thoroughly unbelievable.