There have been a lot of bullies in my life, but none was more enduring or significant than Eric.

I've previously detailed his use of toys and other material goods to maintain friendships. But his megalomania (at least as regarding my life) started in first grade. Eric sat next to me, and on my other side was Geoff. Both wanted to be my best friend, but Geoff had the advantages of understanding my idiosyncracies, willingness to exercise his imagination, and not threatening to beat me up.

That didn't deter Eric. I would arrive in class every day to find a new slip of paper on my desk, bearing his phone number written in a new color (being a child of privilege, of course he had the 64-color Crayola box). To this day I can recite it, though it's unlikely he lives there anymore and I wouldn't plan on calling him anyway.

Staving off Eric, finally, was an exercise in putting my foot down. He was bigger than me, but I'd been beaten up by bigger kids than him at day care already, so that didn't scare me. I let him know in no uncertain terms that Geoff was my best friend and though I was still willing to play with Eric, he had to recognize that.

That day after recess, I opened my desk to find every slip of paper he'd passed me over the year ripped to confetti.

Eric did not hesitate to make my life a living hell for the next six to seven years. He mocked me at school, he prank-called my house constantly, he befriended larger and more violent sociopaths and convinced them to torment me. During fourth grade, when Geoff and I were no longer in the same class, Eric even managed to turn him against me.

I imagine at some point he actually even forgot why I was his constant target, but it did not let up until high school, where I somehow managed to start with a socially clean slate. Maybe because it turned out doing well in school actually mattered now. Maybe because I was suddenly bigger than most of my oppressors. Maybe because I finally had a handful of loyal friends who, as far as the bullies were concerned, just might not be above carrying a weapon. But I flourished, while Eric fell off the radar.

The last time I saw him, we were in college. I was six credits shy of graduating, he'd just started classes. I was involved and well-loved, he was new and alone. Yet he still tried to impress me, to prove how superior in every way he was to me. I couldn't help but laugh -- despite everything, after fifteen years and all the growing up that should have happened in between, he was still the same guy, trying to make me what he wanted me to be. But that's probably what bothered Eric about me: through it all, I was more of who he wanted to be than he was.

Either that or he was gay for me. I'll probably never know.

I got a Snoopy fishing rod for my fifth birthday. It was a simplified version of the rods my dad and his family members had -- no component assembly, just a shorter rod with a reel fused on and a self-activating casting trigger that was easier for little hands to activate than the button. It was the best gift I'd ever received to that point. (Besides Poley.)

That weekend, we went camping in Santa Clara Canyon, home of the Moya family's favorite fishing spot. I couldn't contain my excitement to try out my new device -- before we'd even come to a complete stop at our campsite, I had my rod and was on a bridge separating two lakes. And before everybody was out of the car, I had caught a trout so big my grandfather had to run over and help me land it. It was my first fish, and the only one anyone in our family caught all weekend.

Thus began my love for camping and the outdoors.

My folks always sort of embraced what we now call "fluffy camping" -- the unit with solid walls, soft beds, and built-in stovetops and sinks that requires you to haul it on or behind a truck. It was still nice; even with our powerful toys and protective coatings, we were still out in nature.

But when I was a few years older and a Boy Scout, I learned about the harder ways. Setting up a tent, sleeping on a bedroll, cooking on coals, performing preventative maintenance against spiders and scorpions. It was a more real, more honest, and more satisfying form of camping, easily worth the enhanced difficulty. And when I discovered backpacking -- toting in everything we'd need to survive overnight, if not two days -- it was an even greater thrill. The greatest peace I've ever felt was the night I gained entry to the Order of the Arrow by hiking half a mile down a riverbed from my compatriots, setting up my own meager camp, and enjoying the quiet company of the spruces and the stars.

The backpacking waned once I quit the Scouts (two merit badges short of Eagle, but then I'd only been in it as long as I had for the trips outdoors). But my friends and I still ensured we'd find opportunities to camp, even if it was merely setting up a tent on the beach at the reservoir and subsisting on Pop-tarts and hot dogs. After borrowing my parents' gear enough times, Sed and I were gifted with a set of our own, which, sure, it was partly to stop us asking but also a recognition that we loved it.

Sadly, Florida is not the most conducive state for camping. If the alligators, panthers, raccoons, bears, snakes, and other frightening fauna don't get you, the mosquitoes and no-see-ums certainly will. But we've still got our gear, lying in wait to be used once we return home.

There's another goal, somewhat grander. It's my dream to one day hike the Appalachian Trail end to end. Certainly, this is a long way off, and longer now that I'm out of practice. But with resumed day hikes in the near future, and the occasional overnighter in the Jemez looming not far beyond, I know I can realize it.

This is Poley.

He's a little worse for wear these days. The fluffy decoration on his hat is long gone. The right eye was a victim of the washing machine, and though we found it and glued it back it fell out for good on a camping trip. The pin and the earring show my absolute lack of reluctance to make holes in the plush.

All of which is a testament to Poley being my best friend for the better part of five years.

I got him in my stocking on Christmas Eve when I was four. I'd had stuffed animals before Poley, of course, but something about him just clicked with me. Maybe it was the unusual (for its time) animal type, maybe it was the stark coloration, maybe it was the convenient pocket size, maybe it was the serious look on his face as compared to the insipid smiles on most of my other critters. Whatever it was, Poley followed me everywhere.

He also inspired an entire new class of toy. We all had Transformers, He-Man, Justice League heroes, Muscle wrestlers and MASK vehicles, but my brother and I were the only boys on the block who had Stuffed Animals. By the time I was ten, our collection had grown to 131 unique personalities (though they all spoke with the same sort of just-learned-English-after-moving-from-Marseille substituting-Ws-for-Rs voice). As a budding writer, most of my early stories and comics were about this gang of poly-fill friends.

The Stuffed Animals didn't win me any human friends, though. The early childhood playground is a harsh testing field, and any kid who shows originality is doomed to judgement. More than once I thought I'd found a kindred spirit, only to return days later with a new toy and have it mocked in order that my percieved pal not be ostracized himself.

Eventually I outgrew stuffed animals (to say nothing of the title-capped version), and cut down the collection. But Poley hung in there, serving as a totem for the important things. He was with me when I passed my driver's test. He moved into the dorms at UNM with me and even has a Lobos patch on his butt to prove it. He traveled to Japan and made it into a picture at Kyoto's Jingumae shrine (which would have been here if I still had a working scanner).

And every time I've needed a boost of imagination, a squeeze (or even a glance) helps get the juices flowing. That is his true calling, after all. Poley may not talk much anymore, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a lot to say.

My earliest complete memory is of pounding on the door of the toddler room at my day care, screaming myself hoarse.

I'd turned three years old not much earlier, and was supposed to be moved up to a higher age play group. However, it was the day care's policy to keep those children who could not reliably reach the potty in the nursery, and I was too preoccupied with all the fun I could having to get to the toilet in time. So my pants stayed wet, and I got locked in with the babies.

Later I came to find out that this policy was born of general laziness on the part of the day-care owners. They could hire people more quickly and for less money if said employees could be assured of not having to deal with diapers. In fact, a lot of those yard teachers didn't deal with very much at all -- their oversight largely amounted to sitting in front of the TV and waiting for a kid to hurt someone before moving, which eventually led me to adopt scare quotes when referring to my day "care" center.

The lack of supervision wasn't a total loss, however. Thanks to this inaction, I learned a lot about bullies. Big surprise -- peeing your pants makes you a target for derision. It doesn't help when you have a temper shorter than your average Chinese acrobat, because then schoolyard sociopaths can goad you into launching an ill-aimed kick, allowing them to later employ the "he hit me first" defense and dodge culpability for leaving their Keds up your ass.

To this day, my mom feels bad about leaving us in that cesspool for as long as she did. Choices were slim, though -- my grandmother was very sick, and everybody else she knew either worked or would have charged her more than she could afford. And it's not as though she didn't check them out beforehand; the caliber of care just fell a long way during the eight years my brother and I attended.

At the start of middle school, my mom deemed me mature enough to carry a key and ride the bus. Mike lasted another seven or eight months, until whoever was driving the pick-up van (which had been arriving later and later) flat-out forgot to go to his school. At that point, we all knew that I would do a better job of looking after my brother after school.

And this is why I'm a stay-at-home dad.

My brother and I are two years and three months apart. I know that a lot of times, siblings are bitter rivals and never figure out how to get along, but Mike has always been my best friend and closest ally.

When he was born, my parents had just bought a house in what was the outskirts of Albuquerque at the time, with a bedroom for each of us. The separation never really took. He slept in my old crib, which I'd long figured out -- my mom would find me in there with Mike most mornings, playing with his toys while he watched good-naturedly. Once he was too big for the crib, I insisted we share a room, so my dad quickly scrounged up a bunk bed for us.

We've had our differences, as most siblings have. Mike was always the popular, athletic one, while I was the weird, antisocial schoolie. It led to major turmoil only once, as I've previously detailed. He finally played the bigger man and walked away -- which he had to do a lot, to keep me from taking myself and my problems too seriously.

But when I really had one, I knew he'd be there for me. He may have been better loved among our peers, but it didn't defray his (perhaps misguided) hero worship for his older sibling. I've lost count of the activities he joined because I'd enjoyed them.

Today, we may be on opposite sides of the country, which may stretch our link, but it cannot be broken. It may not be in vogue to say it, but my brother is my oldest, dearest and best friend, and nothing will change that.

My parents made a special effort to bust out the books and newspapers in front of me early on. Literacy is important, and as with most things its importance is learned in the home. By reading to me and demonstrating their eagerness for it, my mom and dad hoped to instill an appetite for the written word in their firstborn son.

Their tactics worked, to a degree few would expect. I was reading within sixteen months.

That makes it sound like I was a prodigy. Honestly, at such an early stage it was all identifying letters. And as with most children, I had my favorite books memorized and could "read" them by turning the pages and associating the tale with the illustrations. But I do carry an early memory (after my brother [tune in tomorrow] but before day care) of turning the pages of Where Does the Butterfly Go When It Rains and actually understanding the assembled letters.

It's a passion that has not waned with time, nor from its associated trials and tribulations. In day care, the classroom, the playground, I was the kid Hollywood portrays as having his book dropped in a mud puddle just before the bullies pants him. In our cross-country move, our library weighed nearly as much as all the furniture in our bedroom.

But today, I have fourteen books checked out from the public library. You have to get them in bulk, after all, when you read them three at a time.

As a fan of the stuff, creating literature (or even just a reasonable facsimile thereof) is the only thing I can remember ever wanting to do. The strained hyperbole and metaphor herein (not to mention overwrought vocabulary) illustrate just how far I have to go, but it's a road worth traveling.

And it has its useful side trips as well. My daughter, unless she tries really hard to be defiant, can do no less than super-literate. In fact, she now has her own copy of my favorite book from childhood to learn by heart.

I've always worked better under a deadline. Nobody can tell you this better than my mom can.

It was Friday, July 22, 1977, and I was two weeks past my due date. My mom's doctor informed her that if I hadn't been born by Monday, labor would have to be induced. And I guess she'd heard some horror stories about it (not that I can necessarily relate; Sed's induction was relatively painless, save the cherry popsicle overflow), so she really didn't want it to happen.

I must have been listening, because Sunday morning at about midnight she went into labor. Two hours later, she rolled over and woke my dad to let him know it was happening. He asked her if she could go back to sleep for a while because he was tired. She gently informed him that no, goddammit, his son was being born now and to get his ass up.

It was a fairly long labor, though not ridiculously so. My mom was fully dilated by 8:30 or so and pushed for three hours. In what was apparently a bout of batty inspired frustration near the end, a nurse actually laid across my mom's midsection. It worked -- at 11:48 am, I came into the world.

Of that:

• I've never been on time for anything since.
  
• I've never worked ahead on an assignment, preferring to finish it at the last second. (I once wrote a twelve-page paper three hours before it was due.)
  
• My screams would foreshadow a lifetime of loudly rooting for my favorite teams.

That was 29 years and 11 months ago today. This year I hit a milestone birthday, and as such I'll be chronicling the important events of my life in one-year increments every day until my thirtieth. Who needs a FAQ?

And so this chapter of my employment comes to a close, not with a bang but a whimper. With one hour left in my last day, I'm finally preparing for the next step, the part that makes me either the best dad in the world or a lazy freeloader, depending on your outlook.

I started working when I was 18, fresh out of high school and recognizing the need for both a few extra bucks and a sense of personal responsibility. None particularly lasted -- the longest I managed to stay employed with any one gig was just over two years. Either they come to the end of a fixed term, or I leave them for something that pays more, or I am unceremoniously asked to leave. At last count, I came up with something like twelve or thirteen jobs in my twelve years of employed life.

This is the first time I'm leaving a job of my own accord without knowing where my next paycheck will come from.

And I couldn't be more excited.

After all, my new boss might be sort of a crybaby, but at least she can't fire me. And she is the cutest girl on the planet, so that keeps things tolerable.

"Are you from Detroit?"

I'm getting the question a lot these days. Michiganders notice my hat and, feeling the natural protective ownership of local boys done good, want to make sure I haven't merely leaped onto the bandwagon following the Tigers' run to the World Series last year. My stock answer of "No, but my stepfather is" probably doesn't win me any points with the Comerica faithful, but the whole story is too long to foist on some random person in the supermarket.

In 1991 (I think), my stepdad decided that we needed to see where he was from. So during our spring break in April, we all hopped on a plane to visit his parents in Canton Township. This was before I kept any sort of journal, so for the most part, my memory of that trip comes in bits and snatches: His mom cooked the same way my maternal grandmother did. The hotel pool had a waterfall. Cemeteries (which we frequented for his genealogy research) all looked the same. There sure were a lot of small towns mashed together. Swimming in a lake in Michigan in April is probably not wise.

But clarion in my mental archives is the facade of Tiger Stadium. In an inspired move, my step-grandfather got us tickets, and walking through that gate felt like living history. We had seats in the lower bleachers along the third-base line, maybe fifty feet from home plate, Mickey Tettleton and Alan Trammell warming up right in front of us. I had my gripes about the trip, but here in the seats at my first major-league baseball game, they melted away for three hours.

It wasn't even that great a game. Cecil Fielder didn't play, and the fresh-out-of-the-World-Series A's were just too quick and too strong for the aging Tigers. And it didn't necessarily click for me right away -- until then I'd been sort of a lukewarm Pirates fan (because what the heck, they were contenders every year and I already liked the Penguins).

But it touched me. And eventually I realized that it made sense. Being a big proponent of rooting for the hometown club, I could justify cheering for Detroit, especially after the Albuquerque Dukes moved to Portland and the Isotopes started feeding the perpetually-shredded Marlins. When I got my first Tigers cap (the 1994 alternate, with the big cat threading its way through the D), it felt right wearing it.

So I'm a Tigers fan. And I'm not from Detroit. Live with it.

The list of things I want for Father's Day isn't very long.

1. A hug from my child
   
2. Breakfast in bed
   
3. Tickets to a baseball game
   
4. Beer

Sadly, I only got the last of those for my first. Which probably goes without saying, given the confluence of circumstances. Consider:

• Avery is yet too young to have motor control enough to lovingly wrap her arms around me;
  
• Sed had to work in the morning, thereby ruining any chance of my eating without getting up; and
  
• thanks to the Florida State League all-star game having been Saturday and the Devil Rays, Marlins, and double-A Jacksonville Suns all playing away games, there was no professional baseball in the entire state of Florida on Father's Day.

That doesn't mean I didn't have a good one. It just means that the entire universe didn't relocate its center point to my head for one Sunday in June. And honestly, it was sort of a training situation. Being a stay-at-home dad automatically means that I have to do the bulk of the doting -- it's right there in the job description. And my ladies' full-time gigs are tiring in themselves. One woman in my house spends all day elbow-deep in smegma and viscera, and the other one's only means of communication is to vary the pitch of her wailing.

Still, they take their time and ensure that I get a lot of it back. How can you not love a gesture like this?

It was probably about this time five years ago today that I grudgingly rolled off the air mattress at my mom's house, still not totally awake but unable to sleep any longer, both thanks to overwhelming nervous anticipation. After all, in six hours, I'd be Mr. Sed.

Don't get me wrong; I wasn't nervous about getting married. It's just that weddings are stressful, I don't care how many people you employ or how smoothly everything runs. The fact is you're on stage from the moment you enter the ceremony site until the car finally pulls away from the reception hall, and everyone you know is there to watch the show. Which can't be a comedic or sardonic production -- you know, totally screwing my genre.

But once we were alone in our arranged bridal suite (hey, you try to consummate romantically with six people staying at your house), the performance jitters flew away, finally letting me enjoy my happiness in having officially and legally united with my true love. And what's remarkable is how much of that feeling has stuck around.

Everybody's busy today. We're running here, we're doing stuff over there, we're calling people and organizing more events, we just got an e-mail on our personal electronic devices that demands an immediate response. It can be hard to sit quietly and appreciate an abstract concept, or take the time to express it with a showy display.

Landmark dates are no exception: Sed's on call tonight. Rather than being wooed all over again by her erstwhile (if harried) suitor, she'll be working until tomorrow morning. And even if she were home, we have another member of our family to consider now and wouldn't be able to make a late evening of it. It can be frustrating, the fact that what potential time together her job doesn't eat is reserved for someone who's still too little to be grateful that our love is the very thing that caused her existence.

But the frustration is a thin veneer. Wipe it away, and I'm right back to how I felt June 15, 2002, as I carried my new bride through the door of our hotel room -- giddy with the prospect of spending the rest of my life with the girl of my dreams. And unless I overdose on bacon or fall on the wrong side of Tony Soprano, we still have quite a bit of that "rest of my life" left. Makes it hard to be mad about temporary time demands.

Happy anniversary, Sed. I love you more than ever, and I still love you more than everything.

As it turns out, a crib might have been a premature expenditure. Ever since the second evening she was home, Avery's been sleeping a lot of the night in our bed. She seems more comfortable when she knows her mom and I are right there snuggled up against the small of her back, rather than separated by the wicker walls of a bassinet. And when it's time for her 2:30 am feeding, it's a lot easier for Sed to just roll over and pull up her shirt.

A lot of you now are shaking your heads at me. "Don't you know it's dangerous?" you're shouting at your computer screen. "Your baby could (choose at least one) never become self-reliant / develop a rash from your non-hypoallergenic fabric softener / smother beneath your arm flab / die of embarrassment when you tell her friends she shared a bed with you!"

To you, I have two responses:

1. Raise your own damn kids however you own damn please.
   
2. It will no doubt satisfy your sense of schadenfreude that I have not gotten a full night of restful sleep in a week thanks to someone (I'm not going to name names, but her initials are Avery Elizabeth) deciding the bed is a good place to dance.

Seriously, this kid whirls her arms and legs in her sleep like they're harvesting wind energy to power her body the next day. If there was any doubt that she was not my child, this would put it to rest. (After all, at one stage in my life I tracked down my parents for semi-coherent conversations while completely unconscious.) Sed manages to sleep through it, but then again, she's back to working 14-hour shifts this month. Plus Avery generally starts gettin' jiggy wit' it during the early morning hours, after Sed's already gotten up for the day and Daddy is still trying to eke out the most possible minutes prone.

The sleepytime calisthenics are good for her, I know. Avery is still young and has yet to really gain control of her motor functions, so I'm willing to put up with it. Because more important than my ability to snore is my daughter's early development. If all I have to endure is the REM Ninja for a few hours a night in order to instill a sense of security and protectedness in my daughter, then it's worth the cost.

Besides, it's not like this family bed thing is permanent. She'll move out once she has a boyfriend.

I climb the stairs to my office every day. It's five floors, but it's worth the exercise since I know I'm going to spend the next eight hours sitting at a computer.

Over the last few months, those stairs have gotten harder and harder to climb. I've found myself of late standing at the foot of the first flight, gazing up and sighing with exasperation at the thought of exerting such effort to get to this office.

But today I practically bounded up them, knowing that once I reached the top, I'd be delivering my letter of resignation.

It's been a long discussion, ongoing ever since Sed and I knew we were going to get married and might have kids. I've always been of the mind that if she's a doctor, I should embrace the doctor's spouse stereotype and stay home with the kids and the housework. This bothered her for a long time -- it made her feel like I was only interested in her earning potential, rather than her sweet ... er, personality. (I'm a parent now, so I guess I have to use responsible language.) So I stopped pushing it, and agreed that even when she's raking in the buckage, I'd keep working and contribuing to our familial bottom line so as to not take advantage of her.

Then she got pregnant.

We both quickly realized that it would devastate us to let someone outside the family take care of Avery for her most important formative years. It's not realistic to expect any of our parents to move to Florida. And unfortunately for her, Sed's put so much work and money and time into her position that it would be career suicide to quit now. Besides, she loves what she does. It only makes sense that I be the one to stay home.

So as of June 23, I am no longer a research funding cop. My full-time job title becomes "dad."

Honestly, though, I'm completely psyched to take on this new position. It's a chance to really prove myself as a parent, to show that I can handle the household upkeep, and to take some of the onus off of my poor, busy wife. Besides, I'm all about inverting stereotypes. I read a statistic this week that less than one-fifth of one percent of all fathers stay home with the kids. That's got my name written all over it.

The only thing remaining is to get some on-the-job training in housekeeping. After all, I'm pretty sure the coffee table made from used pizza boxes is not acceptable beyond the men's dormitory.

People who have spent any amount of time overseas just can't shut up about it. I know, because I'm one of them, but we're an hour into this drum corps luncheon and the girl across from me (to whom I haven't even been properly introduced) has not stopped for breath between anecdotes about her schooling in London and Edinburgh.

"Another thing that's weird about the UK," she drones, "is people don't even acknowledge you on the street. Like here, you'll just talk to people, right?"

"Apparently," I don't say, civilly nodding instead.

"When I first brought my husband here -- he's from Scotland" (she reminds us for the tenth time so far) "-- we were in this restaurant and I was just talking to the staff, and my husband won't look up. He's pretending he's not even with me, and I'm just like, 'What's wrong with you?' But he wouldn't even look at me."

"I can't imagine that," I remain silent.

"But then, when my mom came to visit me in London after that, we were on the bus, and there's this guy in a business suit across from us, right? And my mom just basically assaults him with words. The poor guy doesn't know what to do -- he's got a briefcase and he's hugging it to his chest, looking all around, acting like, who is this crazy lady talking to me and why is there no escape? We got to his stop, and the guy literally ran around four people to get to the door. When that happened, I finally understood what my husband was talking about."

I cast a sidelong glance at my section leader, who is desperately immersing himself in the Indycar engine check on the TV screen above us, attempting escape through complete sensory deprivation, and don't say, "Did you really?"