Fraternal Youth: Fatherhood Fails and Other Tales with Boy-Girl Twins - Paperback

by Darby Jones (Author)

Doom's overdone, so Darby shares hope and hard laughs.

Fraternal Youth is an experimental memoir with QR codes to videos and cultural artifacts such as:

- their dog fetching beer from the fridge (a COVID project)

- gladiator funboard challenges

- family performances

- mom pranks

- gag reels

5 parts fatherhood fails + the absurdity of life

4 parts goofy boy-girl twins + their crazy pets

3 parts adventure (Bonnaroo, Greece, hitchhiking)

2 parts peaceful parenting + simple discipline systems

1 part Headlines of Hope: a six-year hunt for tech, medical and energy breakthroughs + my comical spin

⭐ "Mix Jim Gaffigan, Erma Bombeck and Pee Wee Herman into a Darby Smoothie. Add a dash of nonsense that makes perfect sense and you've got a compilation that spans from raising kids to raising hell. I'm an avid fan."

- Wendy Parker, satirist for Overdrive Magazine

⭐ "Darby stunned me with this book. It's happy, funny, sad and weird - all the things that make up a life well lived, and he tells it with such beauty and momentum. So many chapters swept me away."

- Ginger Cook, Substack Humorist

I changed my first diaper on August 27, 2007. It smelled like fermented mothballs with a touch of failed dreams. I don't know where those subtle notes came from, but they were good reminders to use birth control.

Kids got in trouble at the store. Finn dropped a can of tinned pork on Melina's middle toe. The SPAM survived, but Momma no longer has a piggy that eats roast beef. The toe's still there, but it's a scarred vegetarian now.

"Finn, didn't you say you'd drink your juice after dinner?"

"I didn't hear me say that."

"Shhhh! I heard a sound make a noise." - Fiona

"Every time you go into war, you should go potty first." - Finn