Recently while I was back home in Idaho and pouring over my old grade school homework, I stumbled across a poem I wrote to my mother for Mother's day. I think I had written it in 4th Grade and it was honestly not that bad. I had seemingly mastered the concept of iambic pentameter by this point, which was very enlighting to me.
Essentially I could see talent going something like this. Before we're born, we're bartering certain elements of our lives for other elements. Some men may wish to be good with the ladies, but be unsuccessful in their jobs, others may wish the opposite and end up alone but successful. Apparently, I chose to barter away some element of my life, because I thought that for some reason, my strongest skill would need to be...poetry.
Yes, undeniably, I cannot throw a spiral football. I'm not skilled in building anything. I've grown out of touch with the inner workings of a computer and I'm so inept at cooking I could burn cereal. But low and behold, put a pencil and paper infront of me, and I have yet to meet someone who doesn't at least give me the basic "not bad!"
This skill, being extremely limited in it's use in everyday life, has actually come in handy more then a few times. It's helped me win poetry contests, I've received requests to have it published in literary magazines, and most notably, it's been responsible for woo-ing the hell out of more then a few women (however, unfortunate for me that my in-person follow-up sucks).
Now far be it from me to call poets like Poe, Tennyison, or Silverstein weenies...they poetry changed the face of writing in school forever, I'm just wondering why of all things this had to be the skill I excelled at. If there was ever a way that it could have been incorperated into the Army, hell I'd be a General by now.
Oooh well.
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