Field Sobriety Test: A Message For All Of You Late Bloomers.

For this to work, you’re going to have to close your eyes. Do it.

I want you to picture a third grade classroom with Mrs. Terry, the teacher having all of her kids lined up in front of her desk. This is Brentwood Elementary. Brentwood is a gentle blue color everywhere. Outside, various weather measuring devices litter the yard under the Indiana sky.

There are about thirty kids in Mrs. Terry’s class and we are all holding up 3x5 cards with that week’s spelling words on them. Mrs. Terry inspects the class’ cards. There are a couple of people who don’t have their cards done so Mrs. Terry says to all of us, “These are pretty good, but in the fourth grade, they won’t give those people who didn’t do their cards an extra day.” I was scared shitless.

I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh fuck, fourth grade is going to be hard as shit.”

Fourth grade was easy and dumb. This is because, within the frames that we construct, we have little to no control over what happens to us.

Fourth grade felt about the same, but I was sure middle school was going to be hard.
Middle School was easy, but I was sure that High School was going to be a challenge.
I slept through most of High School and kept a B average but I was sure none of these Plainfield types would bother me at Ball State.
I got to Ball State and met some of the biggest asses I’ve ever met in my life but I was sure, in the working world, there was no way that these people would make it.
Now, I work in an office, and it’s the same fucking people.

In conclusion, the people that surround you never change. I think it was someone really wise or a Hallmark card that said, “Bloom where you are planted.” This (through the magic of tortured logic) is the point that I’m trying to get to today. Saying “bloom where you are planted” is easy from the comfort of your ass, but in this column’s fun fact section, I’m giving you two avenues to get on your feet. Here is this column’s

Super Super Helpful Fun Fact Section

Now, if you have no ambitions in any creative areas, then you can stop reading. As a matter of fact, I want you to stop reading and go re-evaluate your life. Now…do it.

For those of you with writing ambitions, on of the greatest tools that you can use is Duotrope. Duotrope is a search engine of literary magazines and novel publishers. It gives information like, how often a magazine takes submissions, the format that they prefer. If a lad or lass was inclined (like I was for awhile), they could write one piece a week and submit it. If this is done, you WILL be a published author within the year. Mark my words. You will have bloomed into a poet.

For those of you with comedy ambition, you can rely on the third graders with flash cards of the major Chicago training centers, or you can make your own films for the web and be a producer. At www.chicagofilmmakers.org, you can join the Chicago Camera Co-op and have professional quality cameras at your fingertips at hourly rates. They also have access to editing studios and sound work. It’s a lot of work from this point, but we want to bloom here. Blooming is hard. Awesome, huh?

Those should be helpful. Let’s hope. It’s been a good time to evaluate lately. Which brings us to this column’s

Insight Section

“Never, never, never give up.”
Winston Churchill

See what I did there?

Let’s break this down. On one level, I just laid one of the most famous “bloom where you are planted” quotes in the world on you, my loyal readers.

On top of that, I just got out of having to have an insight section written. I was in LA all week and I’m BAWLS exhausted .On top of that, it’s negative one hundred million degrees outside.

Fuck, I’m smart.

Super Short Poem

If you want to fire me, that’s fine.
I’m ”adding value.”
I’m synergizing.
I’m team playing.
Just not at your company.

NOTE:
Field Sobriety Test is going to be adding (filler) some more content (filler) in the form of an email section (filler). If you would like to have your emails addressed in the column, email them to The Field Sobriety Test Mailbag at ryandeegilmour@hotmail.com. Emails will be reposted in the column.