Redblooded Fighter

I grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cushy? Spoiled? Privileged? Right?

It wasn't quite that way. From the age of about 7 or 8 until about 13, I fought every other day.

I was an intelligent, young black male in an all-white school system living in an all-white neighborhood (except for my street). My neighborhood was an anomoly in Bloomfield Hills, almost 95% of the black people who lived in my neighborhood, lived on my street. I never understood why that was. I don't know if we were freely allowed to purchase or build homes on other streets, but it sure was hard NOT to notice the stark contrast.

My entire street was black except for two white families and one mexican family. So, we were pretty close knit. But, we lived one street over from Pontiac - Alice St. Not to offend anyone, but Alice street was the pits when we were growing up. And the next street over was Charles Lane.

Well, every day for years in the Bloomfield Hills schools, I was called names, picked out, picked on for being black, small, smart, different - you name it. Then, most other days when I came back home to my neighborhood, we would have altercations with the residents of Charles Lane who would come over to my street and be like, "what are you doing living in this white neighborhood? Why you goin' to these white schools?" and BAM! It was on!

This happened just about every other day!

It wasn't until I got to high school and the word had spread around school and around town that I didn't play. People stopped picking fights with me because they realized it wasn't worth it. I used to fight hard and serious for years and by high school, most of that ended.

I credit one person and one person alone to curing me of the desire to fight at the drop of a hat ... Malik (my best friend from Morehouse College). He taught to respect myself and others and began to teach me self-defense and martial arts.

Son of a schoolteacher

My mother's name is Versa Coats. Used to be Versa Johnson when I was a child. LOL




For most people who haven't met my mother, she was the picture of education perfection. For example, she would correct our speech at the dinner table during ANY meal.



She was a very regimented person, but she had a knack for (1) occupying your time by making you think and (2) always being there for you when you needed it.



I always say that my mother gave my life structure and organization and my grandfather (e.g. Papa) is the one who taught me just about everything I know to survive.

My mother always wanted me to be "more". She saw things in me that I didn't/couldn't see in myself, BUT ... she didn't see what I saw.

That's where our conflict arose. From very young, I began to have visions of the future. She would support my interests, but begrudingly if they didn't fit her ultimate "plan" for my future. I don't blame her though, she was operating from her reality.

When I was 6 years old, for Christmas, I asked my mother for a computer. I mean ... this was in 1979 and I was 6 years old! Noone had a computer! This was when the Atari 400 computer came out onto the market. This was before the Blu-Ray, before the DVD, before the CD, before the hard floppy disk, before the black flexible floppy disk; this computer had a tape cassette player.

I opened it up Christmas morning and read the books that came along with it about how to program BASIC and started writing little programs. First, I would make it say, "Hello" on the screen. Now, to make it do this, I had to write the program, press the Record and Play buttons on the cassette player and then type "SAVE" on the keyboard.

Then, to run the program, I had to press the Play button and type "RUN". Looking back ... that was crazy! And ... a lot of work for a 6 year old! But, that's how I learned.

Anyways, my mother bought me that computer and that launched me into a whole new reality. For the next 30 years, I've programmed computers all over the world.

My mother also was very tight on giving compliments or affection, but when I came back from college and would go and visit her at her schools where she was the principal, all of the teachers and administrators knew me. Whenever I would come back in town from a foreign country that I was living in, they would be like, "Oh ... you're the one. You're the Morehouse Man. You're the genius! You're the one that speaks 3 languages."

Then ... I understood in the reflection of her peers how much my mother loved and supported me. It took a LONG time, but ... I finally understood.

I love you mom! I wish I would have told you more often. :-(

Where I'm from ...

My name is Sean K. Johnson.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan and moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan when I was ONE year old.

My mother was a school teacher in Detroit during all of my childhood. She became an administrator in Pontiac, MI in elementary schools when I left for college. She stayed there during my college years and retired a few years ago.

I went to all Bloomfield Hills public schools. I graduated in 1990 and went to college at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. I majored in Computer Science and graduated 21/494 students, with a B.S. Computer Science, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

I graduated from Morehouse College in 1994 and applied for and accepted a position to teach English in Futtsu City, Japan for two years from 1994-1996 at 5 different junior high schools. Japan reshaped my life ... more to follow on that.

After Japan, I returned to attend the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor and graduated with my J.D. in 1999. I immediately left the country and moved to London, England. I started my first company there, Third Eye Technology, Ltd.

I left London in 2000 and moved to Oakland, California to work for a statup company in downtown San Francisco. I lost that job and moved back to Michigan right in the middle of the crash of Silicon Valley in the summer of 2000.

Back home, I took a job for a little while with a startup company, Nuspire, in Commerce, Michigan. I worked there for 6 months before I realized that I couldn't "work" for someone else any longer. I restarted Third Eye Technology and began to do website design, database design and development for large auto insurance companies in 2001.

I did that for several years until I decided to take the profits from that business and invest in an internet cafe, Timbuktu Cafe, located in Great Lakes Crossing Mall in Auburn Hills, Michigan in June 2008. I am the president of Timbuktu Cafe and have been gradually building up the education arm of this business.

In a tiny nutshell, that's a brief synopsis of my life.

I've done almost everything academically right and everything socially wrong throughout my life, but what distinguishes me is my ability to reflect and learn from my mistakes.

I started this blog to share some of my thoughts and experiences to hopefully spread some wisdom to those who may not know me and would like to know more.

Sean K. Johnson