we have a new ritual in our home. and to be clear, whenever i say "we have a new ritual" it means i am adding a new thing to my already lengthy list of routines. when the term "we" is involved it just means i am subjecting the rest of my family to the routine as well. i call this new one "house tip of the week".

this stems from a belief i have that if there is some life matter (versus school matter) a young person doesn't know, it is not a failure on the young person's part but rather a shortcoming on the part of their parent or in some cases, their village. i recall the exact moment from my past where the initial neuron behind this belief first pulsed. i was sixteen, a brand new driver, and my parents made me an offer. i could buy a car and they would pay my insurance or they would give me a car, of which they had several, and i would pay my insurance. for reasons i don't recall i chose the latter. i should have known that the car i would be given was the least sexy or fast or functional of all the cars on our lot. it was a 76 volvo station wagon. a 244DL for those in the know. before i got it it had been in a few accidents. after i got it it would be part of several more. it was a great first car for a bevy of reasons the best of which was that every time i turned the key the engine responded without complaint.

one day i had blocked my dad's car in the driveway and he had to run up to the store. so we didn't have to re-situate multiple cars he asked for my keys. when he returned, he found me in the same spot.

DAD
your car has no anti-freeze in it.

TROY
what's anti-freeze?

DAD
it's what keeps the car from over-heating.

TROY
it's still running fine.

DAD
haven't you noticed there isn't any heat? (it being in the dead-center of a colorado winter)

TROY
oh yeah. i had noticed that. i just keep my coat and gloves on when i drive.

DAD
you can't drive it like that. you're going to ruin the engine.

TROY
oh. ok. what do i do?

DAD
well, you have to figure out why it doesn't have any anti-freeze in it and fix it.

so we pulled the car into the garage and i popped the hood and looked at the engine for the first time ever. my dad quickly spotted the problem, a crack in the water pump. he instructed me to go to the volvo dealer and buy a replacement. i asked what then. he said then we'd have to take the bad one off and put the new one on. i said i didn't know how to do that and asked if he would help. he said he would.

after returning from the dealership the next day with the new part, i found my dad and led him to the garage ready to get my car back on its feet. once in there he asked to see the new part. i handed it over. he studied it for a moment turning it in his hands. he then leaned over the engine and peered in.

DAD (pointing)
you see that?

TROY (leaning in too)
yes.

DAD (referencing the large metal part in his hand)
this is that.

TROY
ok.

DAD
so what you have to do is take everything off that is in the way of that, then take that off, then put this on in its place. then put everything you took off back on.

TROY
wait. you mean i have to do all that?

DAD
well, yeah. it isn't going to do it on it's own.

TROY
i thought you were going to help me do it.

DAD
i just did. i told you what to do didn't i?

that was about the extent of my education in car repair. amazingly, from that i managed to make all that happen and aside from snapping some 4-inch long bolts in half that held the water pump to the engine block (leaving portions of the threaded rod inside the holes), i made the repair without issue. and in the future, using that same bit of surprisingly versatile instruction, i made many other repairs to that car and others including replacing alternators and fuel pumps. ¹

but my only real beef with what happened there and what prompted my latest home ritual was the expectation that i should have known all of those things. things like how to tell there was no anti-freeze (or even that there was such a thing as anti-freeze) or about oil maintenance or tire wear. my father seemed to have this expectation that i left the uterus with this knowledge in the bank.

so i try to make myself more accountable to my children on such matters. in example, alex started doing the family laundry earlier this year. one day as i was passing through i saw he had done something wrong. i went and found him and asked him to come with me, that i wanted to show him something. i got the sense he thought he was in trouble and i explained i wasn't upset at him and in fact if anyone was to blame it was me because i didn't teach him the right way to do it. i then confessed to him that i didn't know how to do laundry until i was in college and had to ask a college roommate to teach me so he was well ahead of where i was at his age.

so that's roots of this new ritual. if you're wondering what some actual tips of the week might look like, here are a few that have been bandied about our table thus far:

• balled up towels on the floor will never dry (i will confess it is a little surprising this is not more obvious)
• if you find it clean, leave it clean (this applies to kitchens and toilets more than anything else)
• everything has a home and when you're done with it, that is where it should be put (i lifted this from good friend bookguy)
• you can't say you are ready for the week if you have a dirty desk (this one met with a good amount of resistance from the whole family, marty included)
• if you can only brush your teeth once a day, before bed is the best time to do it.
• don't shit in urinals

folks might question the need for this last one. there was a time i would have thought it obvious too. but then a friend shared a family story with me that showed it might be something i want to address with my people. lucky for me, because of my new ritual, i had the perfect platform to do so.


¹ my proudest car repair involved re-routing an electronic fuel pump's bad wiring through the car's rear-demist. this meant that to turn the car on you first had to first throw the rear-demist toggle on the dashboard. this was without doubt one of the greatest security features ever devised. sadly it was on a car no one would ever want to steal (which technically is an even better security measure). i remember when i traded that car in for my next car, my route to work took me past the lot where i bought the new car (my first non-volvo ever). the car i traded in never moved from the spot i left it in for weeks. i figured the salesmen failed to tell the other people the trick for starting the car. after more than a week i stopped in to tell them again. the older man at the desk, in a wonderfully old-guy dismissive manner, said their mechanic was plenty capable to figure it out and they didn't need my help. he did everything but pat me on the head. i continued to watch that car sit in the same spot until one day it magically dissappeared. i'd bet an oil change that they ended up towing my car from that spot. heck, i'd even through in a tire-rotation.