Before my Cavalier Daily life column, there was my middle school think piece, “The Gospel According to Johnny Boi.” I didn’t play any sports, so I needed some way to spend my time. Naturally, I turned to the hobby of gospel writing. Every week or so, I would write down a page’s worth of bullet point life lessons and email it to a couple of my friends. My reader demographic was almost entirely girls, and I was ok with that. As word spread, I wound up emailing my work to most of the girls in the grade and a few guys, too. My friend Katie has actually had them tucked away in her inbox all these years, and sent all five editions back to me after seeing my current column. After rereading, I think I have a couple lessons to learn from this prophetic Johnny Boi.
Book One of the series begins:
“So many places to begin I don’t know where to start. Well I guess I’ll start with my name, I am John Patterson. This Gospel is a recording of the life lessons I have learned from other people and my own experience. These are the words of wisdom I will share with you:”
Bear in mind this is a 12-year-old talking about his “life experiences.” The platitudes that follow vary in quality, but they all provide an insight into my middle school mind, a fascinating case study. I still agree with some of them, like the first point I ever wrote down.
“All good ideas must be written down so you don’t forget them.”
You never know when you’ll revisit them. Others have less wisdom and more so seem to reference middle school drama crises that I’ve long forgotten.
“Get over it,” and “if you look at things from a your-entire-life perspective, things usually aren’t that bad” are prime examples.
I probably wrote those two after one of our school dances when a girl didn’t want to “slow-dance” with me. My favorite sub-tweet comes from Book Two, titled “All You Need to Know is in an Episode of ‘Law and Order: What people say and what people think are two different things.”
I have no idea who this refers to but I know I was definitely throwing shade at a backstabbing middle schooler. Somebody probably revealed my amorous feelings to my crush or some other world-ending betrayal. Reading this line also made me worry that I might speak less intelligently now than I did then because if I made this same point today I would articulate it simply as, “Snakes in the grass, man.”
All in all though my musings are pretty wholesome, and it’s these innocent thoughts of my 12-year-old self that warm my heart the most. From Book Two comes the advice “Don’t do drugs,” which I probably wrote around the time we had “Drug-Free-Me” week at school.
My Catholic schooling shines in the whole series too. First, in the name “The Gospel According to Johnny Boi,” which is a reference to John’s Gospel, the trippiest and most philosophical of the four gospels. And then there’s a gem in Book Four “The Guy’s Guide to Girls,” which I would never be so confident to write today because claiming to explain half the world’s population seems tricky. Regardless, I wrote, “‘Guys’ advice isn’t really that useful unless the guy is Jesus.” I’d add some people to the list, but hey, I think Johnny Boi started it strong.
A considerable number of my points foreshadow the college student I’d become, which surprises me because I very strongly disassociate from my middle school experience.
My English major side shines through the entire premise of writing for fun, but John the Economics major makes a cameo in the gospel, too! I see in Book One I wrote, “Every choice has a consequence.” If only I knew what opportunity cost was back then.
John the RA is here too in Book Five, “How to Cope,” with advice such as, “Honestly, the best thing you can do is forgive and communicate with someone you trust. (That was cheesy.)” I could solve a resident conflict with that right there — thanks middle school John. Also from the book on coping comes the desperate-for-readership author John, “Read The Gospel According to Johnny Boi. It probably won’t make you feel better, but I could use the readers.”
By the way if you ever have a spare minute read The Cavalier Daily life column written by John Patterson. It probably won’t make you feel better, but I could use the readers.
I’m hooked on the art of writing because it lets me travel through space in time. These “books” are a time capsule to a time when I was cocky enough to call my writing a gospel and self-publish it to my classmates’ inboxes. I definitely don’t have the guts to do that now — I feel cocky just calling my pieces “articles.” It does make me think that maybe I haven’t evolved from middle school as much as I like to advertise — maybe the seeds of who I am were always there and just didn’t come to full fruition until college.
I’m glad I wrote down these thoughts, even though at the time I suspect I was publishing them as an excuse to talk to whoever my crush of the week was. Now, they’ve taken on a much larger role as an artifact from an era that I wouldn’t revisit otherwise. I’m sure in 10 years I’ll look back on my Cavalier Daily columns and have a good laugh too — it’s just another thing to look forward to in my 30s!
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