Troy and Angela Rockwood

Troy and his pins are infamous. He's always got a safety pin or two dangling about his clothing or hidden in his things. If you ask him, he'll tell you they're holding his socks up, but that's only one of a myriad variations you can get out of him. This is the real story.

When Troy was in grade school his mom got tired of matching socks and used to pin all the kids' socks together after the laundry was sorted to keep them matched. During the day the kids were supposed to take the pin off, and wear the socks, then pin them together again for washing so she wouldn't have to match them all again. Well, it was a good idea, but kids are kids and they'd forget to pin them back together at night so pretty soon Troy had a bunch of safety pins built up on the bottom of his shirts where he kept them. It didn't take long to get the reputation of always having pins with him so when people needed one in an emergency they knew where to go.

The trouble was that they'd forget to bring them back and then his mom didn't have enough pins So he made a deal with people. "I'll give you a pin today in time of need and you bring me back two tomorrow" so then people were bringing him pins and got the idea that he liked pins. Whenever they saw a cool one, or a different looking pin, they'd bring him that one too. It just escalated from there.

When we were dating, he gave me a pin he got from someone that had a little jeweled dog dangling from it. Some friends of his that worked in the Laundry at BYU "borrowed" some of their giant laundry pins that they used to keep the big bags of laundry shut with. He ended up with those too. When I had to put my artwork on display for the design department review, I found one of those six inch laundry pins holding up one of my wall displays. I knew he'd been there.

One six inch pin was gold and he had me paint roses on the head of it and he kept it on his backpack for the rest of his college years. They became his signature thing to have around. He'd invent cool stories to tell people when they asked him about his pins. Those pins have made a showing throughout every major stage of our lives so far.

When we were married he wore three good sized safety pins on his lapel and when Anna was born he changed them to three large diaper pins with yellow duckies on the heads.

Before we adopted our three boys, their birthgrandmother asked in hushed tones what the pin thing was about since the boys had started wearing pins like their daddy. She thought it was some religious thing. You never know I guess.

Troy gets a kick out of it and I've long since quit trying to discourage him from wearing them. They're a little like duct tape in universal usefulness; wardrobe malfunctions of a hundred varieties have been safely avoided (hence the name). They're even good for minor surgery if you happen to be afflicted with a sliver or two. Who knew?