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

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:

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

- gladiator funboard challenges

- pop culture videos

- mom pranks

- gag reels

Fraternal Youth Cocktail:

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

Praise for Fraternal Youth

⭐ "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, Humorist on Substack

Early Excerpts

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.

2 years, 8 months old

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.

3 years, 8 months

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

"I didn't hear me say that."

4 years, 10 months

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

5 years, 11 months

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

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Fjords Books
Published: 12/12/2025
ISBN: 9798993976402
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.48d