jeff blout: The Mayor of Central Street

Read my column in the Arlington Advocate on Oscar the cat here...

http://www.wickedlocal.com/arlington/news/lifestyle/columnists/x313649951/Column-The-mayor-of-Central-Street

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Welcome to my website. However you arrived, I’m glad you’re here. Now, let me explain what I’m doing here...

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

It’s a question adults ask of children."I don’t know" was always my answer.Astronaut? Fireman? Doctor? Not me. I had no clue. No goals.

After an unremarkable twelve years in the public school system, I took the civil service exam and accepted a job with the US Postal Service.

"What do you do?"

It’s a question adults ask of one another.

"I work for the US Postal Service" was always my answer.

As Americans, we expect both questions - What do you want to be? and What do you do? - to be answered one way, with a job title. Pretty short-sighted when you think about it; our occupations personifying us. You’re probably saying to yourself, I wonder if he’d be giving this so much thought if he were, say, a lawyer instead of a civil servant. Probably not. But I am, so I’ve thought about it a lot.

For years, I wished people would ask, "What have you almost done or been?" Now that would be an exciting conversation:"Well, let’s see, I am almost 6 feet tall. I was almost an athlete then I was almost a drummer. I was almost an alcoholic before I almost went to college. I almost got married then almost died."

Pretty cool answer, no? Makes you curious at least, doesn’t it? I’m guessing more so than if I’d answered, "Postal worker". Unfortunately, no one asks about near-misses. So I went along with the program of work=self until one day at the post office - of all places - a statement escaped my mouth like a repressed hiccup. During the course of a conversation on career choices, I said, "I wish I had taken a shot at writing."

I spent a restless night tossing and turning that conversation over in my mind. I thought, What’s stopping you from trying? All I needed was a pen, some paper and a story.

That was the fall of 2005.

Several years earlier, in January, 2001, I contracted a life-threatening blood infection known as septicemia (blood poisoning), and came within a few hours of having my obituary read: Postal Worker Dead at 35.

After a full recovery, I waited for my life-affirming epiphany. It didn’t come. At least not right away.

Later that year, I began to recount my experience in near-death-diary form. I wrote down everything I could remember. Then, about half way through, I buried it in a drawer, and in the process, added almost-writer to the list of things I’d brushed up against and abandoned like a hit-and-run driver.

Fast-forward four years.

In need of something to write, I dug out the septicemia story and set about finishing it. Wanting to write was something I’d kept private. But, now I’d gone and said it out loud to another human being. It was no longer my secret.After a couple re-writes, and some much appreciated advice from a grammatically-gifted co-worker, I began handing copies of my finished essay to friends, family members and co-workers. My hands trembled and my stomach clenched. I was out there. Vulnerable. Awaiting their verdict.

One by one, they reciprocated; the praise was intoxicating; the encouragement sincere. It took almost five years, but, by writing about almost dying, I’d found my life-affirming epiphany.

Several writing classes, and hundreds of hours of solitude later, I had my first story published in Newsweek - It was official, I was a writer.

After years of not wanting to hear the question, "What do you do?" I now answer, "I’m a writer who works for the postal service."As for the other question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"I’m a late bloomer. It took forty years to figure out what I wanted to be. Trouble is, now that I’ve grown up, nobody asks.

jeff blout

Monday, October 26, 2009

The Mayor of Central Street

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