Brad Marley Professional storyteller. Dad. Lover of things.

For 30 days, I will be sharing random stories from each year of my life as the big three-oh looms. Consider it my way of coping.

The year is 2009.

This morning I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, pondering life, while my daughter played a doot – do – doo on the empty coin rolls she found when she was ransacking our office. 

In a little less than four months, we will welcome a new baby girl into our hectic lives and, to be honest, we don't know if our tiny house is big enough for the four of us, but we don't have a choice, do we?  I think my daughter is going to be shocked with a baby actually comes out of her mommy's belly, like we have been telling her all along.

Is this what you're supposed to do in your thirties?  Do we suddenly become worriers, fretting over everything, far removed from the laid-back lifestyle of our twenties?

Or is age, like Aaliyah crooned, nothing but a number?

I certainly don't feel different than I did last night as I thought about how to end this self-imposed project, and there were no new gray hairs that sprouted overnight.

Maybe turning 30 isn't all it's cracked up to be; perhaps I won't really feel the need to reflect until I'm 40.

At any rate, I'm not going to let it affect me.  At the very least, it gave me a reason to blog for 30 days in a row.

Anyway, I'm more concerned with seeing if the Detroit Tigers can sweep the Chicago White Sox tonight at Comerica Park, which is where I'll spend the end of the first day of a new decade, if I can remember how to get there.

For 30 days, I will be sharing random stories from each year of my life as the big three-oh looms. Consider it my way of coping.

In 2008 I became a real public relations professional.

But, Brad, does that mean you were a fake public relations professional up to that point?

No, not really, but I got my first experience of life on the road. 

Over the span of four weeks, I visited Dallas, Orange County and Washington, D.C. to support events on behalf of a client.  I felt like a musician on tour, albeit with no groupies, drugs, binge drinking or trashed hotel suites (unless you count the bowl half-eaten room service oatmeal I left behind in Dallas).

Coupled with a separate trip to Denver a few months earlier, my newly created frequent flier accounts were bulking up.

But the best part was seeing different parts of the country.

If had a few minutes to spare, I was able to sneak away and take in some sites, the highlight being Dealey Plaza in Dallas.  That was a surreal experience.

All in all, in 2008, I traveled farther West than I have ever been in my life, surpassing Denver, which had been the Westernmost point until November. 

Yes, it was work-related, but that didn't make it any less exciting for a PR professional who, until that point, considered a client visit in Ann Arbor exotic.

For 30 days, I will be sharing random stories from each year of my life as the big three-oh looms. Consider it my way of coping.

Suffice it to say, nothing else in 2007 comes close to matching the life-changing event that was the birth of our daughter.

I don't care what anybody says – if you've never been a parent, there is no way to appreciate how great of a change you and your significant other have to endure when you come home from the hospital with an 8-pound human being who is completely and totally dependent upon you for everything.

Let me repeat: everything.

Friends – what are those?

Sleep – what was that?

Free time – isn't that what we fill with sleep?

Needless to say, it was a transition.

But then you start to do things that you never thought you were capable of.

You give a squirmy newborn a bath on the kitchen counter and she doesn't drown.  Okay.

You go to work on three hours of sleep…and survive.  Alright.

You don't recoil when they projectile vomit curdled milk out of their mouth and nose all over your bed comforter.  Nope.  Still gross.

Okay, so you start to handle most things.  And as the days pass, things start to get a little easier. 

Before you know it, they're walking and talking and that the moment when you walk in the front door after work, and hear the pitter-patter of feet running your way, is the highlight of your day.

Suddenly, everything that is important in your world is right in front of you, showing you their new shoes that they're wearing on the wrong feet.

And you never, ever want them to grow up.

For 30 days, I will be sharing random stories from each year of my life as the big three-oh looms. Consider it my way of coping.

My friends and I spent a large portion of the summer of 2006 at Comerica Park in Detroit.

Something strange and foreign started happening in April of that year, and remained in place until October: the Detroit Tigers were winning.  Actually, they didn't stop winning they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

But let's focus on the positive.

There was a building sense, as the season broke out of the cold spring, trudged along through the sweltering summer and reached its apex as the leaves started to change color, that 2006 was different.

It didn't matter if we were down by ten runs going into the bottom of the ninth; there was never a sense that we were out of the game until the final strike.

And one warm evening that summer, we got to experience first-hand the magic of '06.

The Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians, who had brought up phenom Fausto Carmona to close games for them.

Going into the ninth, we were losing, but the tying run was on base when ex-Tiger, Pudge Rodriguez stepped to the plate.

You have to understand that by this point in the season, the fans were starting to believe that anything was possible.  Not having seen a winning baseball team in close to twenty years, we didn't totally understand how to act, we just new it was so much better than cheering for the team to not break the all-time loss record.

On that night, they delivered again.

My memory is a bit foggy as to when it happened, but when Carmona delivered the pitch and Rodriguez made contact?  You knew it was gone.

Poor Carmona.  He brought his hands up to his head and crumpled to the mound as if he'd been shot and 40,000 people were cheering his assassination.

I went ballistic.

If you had shown up with no idea of what was happening, you would have thought the Tigers won the whole thing (again, we''re not going to get into that.)

We walked out of the park sharing high-fives with complete strangers.  It was, literally, the highlight of my summer.

***

I was in Mexico on my honeymoon when Magglio Ordonez sent the Tigers to the World Series via a homerun, so I was forced to watch a tape-delayed feed in Spanish.  I imagine I didn't experience the same level of excitement that my friends back home experienced, but celebrating in a hotel room on the Caribbean Sea had to do.

If I wanted to, I think I could have chosen 30 sports moments that have defined my life thus far, but I didn't want to bore you even more. 

But when it came down to choosing an event from 2006, this was at the top of the list.

(Okay, it was a close second.  Getting married was at the top, but this was more exciting.) 

For 30 days, I will be sharing random stories from each year of my life as the big three-oh looms. Consider it my way of coping.

The beginning of the year 2005 on the traditional Gregorian calendar did not portend great things for the rest of the year.

I hated my job, lived with my parents and was dangerously close to going broke.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Dude, sweet, I wish I still lived with my parents.  Free food, free rent, no chores…

Stop.  There is nothing sweet about living with your parents when you're a 26-year old.

My brother, who moved back in with my folks between graduating from college and finding a job, shared a tale with me about the morning when he was in the shower, and my Dad, minus his glasses, poked his head inside the shower and started making kissy faces at my brother.  He thought it was my Mom. 

I don't care that that's one of the funniest stories ever.  It's not cool living at home past a certain age, and that is case in point #1.

Then, one night, I was rifling through some old job-hunting stuff in the basement when I came across a cover letter I had sent in 2000 to a brand-new PR firm in the area. On a whim, I decided it wouldn't be the worst idea ever to send another cover letter and resume, but this time, with some more experience under my belt, that letter turned into an interview, which turned into another interview, which turned into another interview, which turned into yet another interview, until that 8 x 11 piece of white computer paper with some words and salutations turned into…a job.

When I walked out of the office after being offered the job, I did one of those extended fist pumps that Eric La Salle used to do during the opening credits of ER back in its heyday.

Talk about cheesy.

But to say I was thrilled would've been an understatement.  I was going from a job as a contract worker to a full time position where they took taxes out of my check, allowed for paid time off and – gasp! – provided health care.

It was unbelievable.

I was sort of in a holding pattern in terms of my living situation and relationship, but getting that job allowed me to move forward and start building a life.

If I was forced to choose the top five moments of my life, I don't know if this would make the list, but only because it happened with so little fanfare that it sort of flies under the radar.

However, in terms of future ramifications, it could not have been more huge.