My first-ever girlfriend was Anna Smith. She moved to Fort Collins from Nebraska in the middle of ninth grade. I had two classes with her, and we found it easy to talk with one another right away. I don't recall how long it was before our multi-hour phone calls began but each ended by one of our parents picking up another phone in the house and saying they thought we had talked long enough. ...

"See you Sunday."

This is what we say to Anthony when he leaves the house. It doesn't matter if the day is Monday or Saturday; this is what is said. The source of this is tied to a single weekend from his sophomore year where Anthony left the house on Saturday morning with no real plans in hand, and we didn't see him again until Sunday evening.

He did a number of things with tho ...

I think Anthony...

Anthony. Where to even begin in describing what it's like to exist near a now 16-year-old Anthony Walter DeArmitt.

His life mantra for the past few years has been, "it will probably be ok," and to date, he has been 100% right.

Even though academics might be one of his top skills/gifts, he has applied to a trade school where he will study the construction arts in his last two ye...

one of the larger parental debates between marty and i has revolved around bella and sex. marty's for it, and i'm against it. let me clarify that a bit. marty's open to that journey beginning in high school, and i think it has less to do with someone's age and more to do with their maturity or state of readiness if you will. marty's core argument, "what, you want to send your daughter to college w...

bella has a new beau. he recently loaned her his wrestling sweatshirt which she wore for three, maybe four days straight. after a few days i commented on it. when i did she smiled, lifted the fabric to her nose and in a completely stereotypical and squeally way said "it smells like joshua vance plus puppies."

for those who have not had the privilege, joshua vance is a dreamy and uber-cool young man we know. you can get a glimpse of him here teaching alex how to wake-board. we won't get into the nuances of her comparing the smell of this boy to the smell of another boy. those feel like dangerous waters.

but i am perfectly ok admitting that i am nearly absolutley certain no one in the history of my life has ever said, "oh my god, this smells like troy dearmitt and puppies." maybe "this smells like troy dearmitt and the week-old newspapers beneath a bunch of puppies" but never just troy and puppies.

i woke up at my usual 6:30. this was a saturday. i went to the kitchen to get my morning drinks. as i walked into the kitchen, anthony entered at the same time from a second doorway. i knew he had slept downstairs in the living room and assumed he was still balled up on the couch. surprised, i asked him why he was up. he said he couldn't sleep. i tousled his hair, told him it was too early to be u...

there is a boy in one of bella's classes that is missing a card or two from his deck of social graces. in the first few weeks of class bella caught him repeatedly staring at her and her table-mate. after a few weeks of these ongoing gazes, and on a day day where bella may have admittedly not have gotten a full night of sleep, she walked into class, watched this boy watch her walk to her desk, drop ...

as i said yesterday my most pondered question of 2015 was what should we do about our children's impossible-to-police and premature exposure to the open waters of internet porn. the parental measures offered by browsers and operating systems are more laughable than my junior high hair style. instructing a child to "steer clear" rivals abstine...

my most pondered question in 2015 was what to do about all of this internet porn. well, not in regard to you or me but in regard to these children we are bringing up. i come from a generation where most people HAD sex before they SAW other people having sex (via video porn). that era is more wrecked and faded than the playboy you dug out of the apartment dumpsters. for your average teenage boy how many examples of intercourse, both pedestrian and outlandish, do you think they might consume before they, themselves, first engage in the act? your options are (a) none, (b) a dozen, (c) 38,956. if you answered anything other than C then i suggest your pull your head out of the sand (or worse) and join the rest of us in the existence that is actually taking place.

you might say, not my problem, i don't have boys, i thankfully only have daughters. well, who exactly do you think your daughter is going to marry einstein?

and even if you do have daughters, i, like possibly you, thought they are immune and above such hi-jinks. i have since learned you may not be as safe as you thought.

the pre-youPorn generation likes to joke how a few "instructional" vids may have helped their game and social stock when they were figuring it all out but that joke is funny for about seven seconds which pretty much leaves the rest of your and your children's adult life to figure out how to fold their online porn conditioning into their own real-world relationship(s).

i mean consuming porn for adults who are already formed and broken and kinked in our own way is one thing but what in the world does a bottomless firehose of un-policed and un-curated and un-censored pornography do to a developing mind. fortunately for you, i know the answer: we have no idea. none. not even a start, an inkling. a fragment of a lead. all we know is it might be a good idea to nudge your children towards a career in counseling because next to tattoo removal, that is likely to be one of the most booming industries in the decades ahead.

i've got about seven months worth of things to say on this topic. i won't be starting seriously today but am giving you fair warning that this is a place we will be soon traveling so charge your phone and learn how to clear your browser history as we are going to visit in some dark, cringe-inducing and keep-you-up-at-night topics.

bella has been fighting for a coed sleepover.

a coed sleepover between a group of sophomore aged kids!!! i almost guffawed the first time she asked about it, and not to be a jerk but because i thought she was totally joking. thankfully i held it in long enough to see she was not. in the days following the request i asked several of my same-aged friends if they could imagine asking their ...

boy am i glad i'm not at the front-end of dating. it probably wasn't until my thirties before i felt like i had any kind of proper sense regarding everything i was asking for in a partner AND how to competently determine everything that was being asked of me. in recently talking to a young person (who wasn't my child) who was dejected, sad, and hurting my mind raced with where to even begin.
...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. worm-age

as bella worked her way towards her teens, numerous people warned us of our pending doom, advising us to enjoy our little girl while it lasted. not having navigated the waters yet, marty and i found it hard to make a qualified defense to the assertions. so instead we kept saying and believing that it didn't have to go that way. the other night after reading to the boys for bed, i sat down at my computer to tend to the day's email. filling the screen was an open word document. it read:


regarding these "inevitable" fights, i believe i have come upon a secret weapon which can mitigate both the frequency and volatility of these altercations. i call it, blandly, the twenty minute rule. the twenty minute rule states that if you ever see a family member, especially a child, coming off the rails you need to evacuate the area, isolating the failing human as quickly as possible for approximately twenty minutes. most typically, once a reaction begins, there's no preventing it. thinking you can steer around it would be like thinking you can stop yourself from projectile vomiting by holding your hand over your mouth. so evacuate the building. don't look the infected human in the eyes. move everyone out of the blast radius and quarantine the affected human so that when they do blow there are no innocents within shrapnel range as this can lead to chain reactions, sometimes bringing a whole home into emotional ruin.

guided meditations often point out that just like with weather, there are always blue skies overhead. it's just that sometimes we can't see them because a cloud front has moved in, blocking the view. the thing that makes the twenty minute rule work is that the systems are always in motion and if unprodded will typically move past just as swiftly as they rolled in. but if they are provoked they will grow in size and temper. give them space, they will move on and before you know it, you'll be looking at blue skies again. this is one of the advantages of an ever-changing universe and understanding that in the time it took you to read this sentence the world about you is forever changed and never to again look the way it did when you read the first word of this sentence. so let it change. embrace the change. and when you see dark skies, seek cover because oftentimes the storm clouds will move out as swiftly as they moved in.

also, i've learned this technique also applies with adult, professional relationships but for reasons both obvious and nuanced, the window is more like 24 hours instead of twenty minutes. the classic example here is not sending that angry email at the peak of your angst, but waiting until the next day, re-reading it, and seeing if you think it would be sensible to send it on. rarely have i looked at that email after a night's sleep and thought, yes, this is the push in the shoulder that's going to make this human act more civily towards me.

here you can see the twenty minute rule taking form several years back.

i'm that dad who challenges kids, wether they are my own, known or some random kid i've never met, to employ their manners (e.g. saying 'thank you' or 'please') when something is done for them. recently i went out of my way to give one of alex's friends a ride. when i delivered him to his destination, a group sleep-over, he began bounding up the front walk without as much as a 'see-ya'. i called to him:

TROY
ethan!

ETHAN (10)
yes.

TROY
is there anything you might want to say or do to acknowledge that something was just done for you?

ETHAN
i don't think so.

TROY
truly.

ETHAN
oh. that. (with this, he bows in a courtly way and says with a regal flourish). i thank you kind, old sir for the ride in your lovely chariot.

he then turned and resumed his sprint into the house to meet his friends. the mom hosting the party stifled her laughter as i looked at her. when i gave her that 'really' look she shrugged her shoulders and reminded me that i did chide him for a thank you. this was the first time this kind, old sir had the grumpy, old phrase 'kids today' roll through his not-so-kind, old mind.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. a phase

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. slackers need not apply

as of today, 3/6/2014, i am the father of a teen-aged daughter.

a lot of people have been giving us warning glances and telling us to brace for the next bit of road. thus far, while we do see the occasional dustup, it has not been all that bad. i believe a contributing factor is marty and i have never subscribed to the 'it's gotta be this way' mentality regarding any facet of parenting. w ...

bella and cecelia were far from the youngest girls at this sara bareilles concert (back story) as it seemed like i saw some as young as eight in the room. this made it all the more scandalous when sara b dropped her first f-bomb after a song and then shared that not many people knew she swore like a trucker, something she and her ...

on a tuesday, bella approached me to ask if she and a friend could go to a concert. this would be bella's first concert. before i could speak she pleadingly added she and her friend loved this performer who was a really great girl and the concert was at a venue in our neighborhood so we could walk there meaning she could get home super-fast. the pitch went on a while. i asked the date of the show....

the interested in boys switch got thrown on bella recently. both before and after the switch a few boys have shown interest in bella. obviously since the switch, bella has shown interest in a few boys. also obviously, bella has been asking when she can start dating. the short answer has been "not yet". her repeated and consistent reply has been "then when?". marty is inclined to say something like...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. boyfriend

in choir bella (11) bent down to pick something up and hit her head on the back of the chair. she exclaimed an unchecked and uncharacteristic "shit!". when she stood up one of her friends had turned to her, held her arm forward offering her hand to bella and said, "bella. welcome to the dark side. we've been expecting you." then another friend standing behind them started breathing like darth vader. it seems bella was the last to utter a swear in front of the group, a group of playful and sweet girls, as evidenced by this wonderfully precious moment.

i later caught bella muttering the same swear around the house and told her she needs to mutter that more quietly because i didn't want my kindergarten boy taking it to school. after catching bella in the phrase a few more times, i asked a favor of her. i asked that whenever she says felt required to say shit, she extends the phrase to shitake as in shitake mushrooms. early on there was a prominent pause in the syllables as you'd hear "shit" then a few beats later a "... take mushrooms" tacked on the backside. but now, already, it pretty much just comes out as "ahh, shitake mushrooms".

while we're talking inside language, the phrase bella and i use to reference "girl things" is fuzzy pickles. this might go something like:

TROY
bella what took you so long? i thought you were ready to go.

BELLA
i was but had to deal with some fuzzy pickles.

TROY
oh. right. you good now?

BELLA
yep.

TROY
cool.

i like being part of a larger family far more than i ever thought i'd like being part of a larger family.

bella has an enviable stance on fashion. thankfully, her brain hasn't yet gone numb like some of her peers in regard to blindly following what they see others doing. i'm not entirely sure what has held this moment off as she's imbibing the same sort of music and media as her peers. but still, she routinely says things like "that looks funny" or when she sees the fancy stuff in a store will say "that seems like a lot of money. why wouldn't people just get something at goodwill?". in the end i'm confident we're seeing another show of marty's fine work.

a few nights back marty and bella went out to get some pants for a school concert and came home with, in addition to the black pants they needed, a pair of skinny jeans. the next morning bella happily sported them in the kitchen striking poses in her new fancy wear. as she vogued out, i thought of this quip i had just read in men's health: as bella continued the exhibition, i feared "the change" had arrived and i quietly mourned the moment over my oatmeal. then not ten minutes later at the bus stop bella dropped a pencil and after effortfully bending down to retrieve it said, "i think i just found a difficulty with my new jeans." thankfully through the day she discovered more difficulties, like the need to keep them from falling off her backside while running after someone down a school hallway. so the cry of wolf may have come too soon as my girl still seems to have enough tomboy and tomcat in her to keep her out of the high weeds of adolescent confusion and nonsense.

marty stopped me from walking into the kitchen. i asked why. she said bella was making a call. i said so what. she changed the expression in her face to something i'd never seen before. she said bella was calling a boy. and it was best she wasn't disturbed. i nodded ascent. i then turned, raced upstairs, grabbed my camera and then slunk into the kitchen. i have subsequent pictures that show her tu ...