Sean Johnson - Intentionally - The Education of Sean Johnson

When I was in elementary school, I used to think about how cool it would be to move.

At the time I was extremely skinny, the same shade of milky transparency, with bad teeth and a stupid haircut. I was just talented enough to participate in sports but untalented enough to be one of the last picked. I was smart enough to be put in the smart kid classes but not smart enough to realize that people don’t want to hear about how smart you are all the time.

I wasn’t particularly gifted with the ladies either. I remember saving up enough money to give a crush Elizabeth Taylor Diamonds perfume, an odd thing for a fourth grader to do. It didn’t turn out very well, and I ended up being chased around the playground by her boyfriend, Justin Mondragon.

So when my mom started dating again, I was excited. There was a part of me that thought about what it would be like to be in a new school district where no one knew who I was. I could be anything I wanted. In my silly brain, my dream scenario involved three things: playing on the basketball team, having a bedroom in the basement (because all my cool friends had bedrooms at least two floors from their parents), and being known as the guy who knew all about Mozart and other classical music. I was obviously very in touch with what kids thought to be cool. And I didn’t even like classical music.

Eventually we did move. And while I did end up making the basketball team and getting a basement bedroom (sadly, my third strategy for ultimate coolness never materialized), I didn’t change that much. Neither did people’s opinions of me. I grew a mullet, which didn’t help things. I also continued to try to woo girls with strategies more apt for, say, men in their fifties. I bought a girl a 10 karat bracelet and offered it to her while asking her to the dance. She said I was a loudmouthed jerk and gave it back.

A lot has transpired between my awkward days of adolescence and today. But there are times where I still catch myself wanting to be someone else. I’ve joined a basketball league here in town, and the fact that I’ve not played competitive basketball in 5 years shows. I’m the worst player on the team - shots that used to go down easily (and still go down in practice) miss almost every time. I suck wind, my face is solid red, my hair is a giant orange puff, my knees and shins and feet hurt. And it’s really frustrating.

The guys on my team are what you would imagine in a typical competitive basketball league - they’re in phenomenal shape, they have bronze skin and great smiles, and they run circles around me. And there’s a part of me that still envies folks like that. They were the kid that chased me around the playground for giving his girlfriend cheap, old person perfume.

There are times when it’s tempting to think about how cool it’d be to move to a place where no one knows you. When work gets overwhelming or you make a fool of yourself en route to being crowned worst player in the basketball league, When you realize that you’ve developed a reputation for being loud and prideful. When your skin is bad and your weight slowly climbs.

But then you look around and you realize that for whatever reason, there are people that actually like your pale skin, that think your jokes are actually funny, that think you’re better at what you do than you give yourself credit for. And you realize that, just as there are a dozen things about yourself that you wish were more like other people, those people are probably looking right back at you and wishing the same thing - wishing they had a loving family or a beautiful wife or a skill that was more in demand or a lifestyle that allowed them a tremendous amount of freedom.

And like you, they wish they knew more about classical music.