www.TheSuttonz.com
Sean Elliott Sutton
aka "Big Sean"
I was born February 28, 1983, in the far away city of Biloxi, pronounced BUH-LUX-EE, for all you folks that settled north of Interstate 10), in the state of Mississippi. I was born to Sandy J. and Willard G. Sutton, or as Uncle Kynny would like people to think, my parents found me on the back porch. Either way, I was born into a family like no other, in ways that some people will never understand. I share my birthday with two very unfortunate things; the exploding of the Challenger mission in 1986 and the worst, the Super Bowl every few years. I’m not proud of it, but they seem to be two very important parts of history although I’ll never understand why the latter should be important to anyone.
Like the rest of the Suttons, my immediate family never seemed to stop moving or trying something different. The Air Force has taken us all over the U.S. and to Germany. Somehow I managed to get back to where it all started, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which is NOTHING like the rest of Mississippi. The people on the coast are actually in the same century as the rest of the country.
While my original Sutton parents didn’t stay together, which also seems to be pretty common if you’re a Sutton male other than Grandpa (I certainly hope that I have a little more luck than they did), the outcome was not at all a misfortune, along the way I gained a large family via my Sutton-mom Paige, especially my Mamaw and Papaw, and an Italian family through my Lesser-dad Bob. I feel that I’m the luckiest person in the world to have such a huge family that comes from four very distinct backgrounds and regions of the country. The Lessers come from New York, The Rettmans/Lamsons from Michigan, the Suttons from Maryland/D.C. via Alabama, and The Lowes from the Mississippi/Texas. Without ALL of these families being a part of my upbringing, I think that I would not be as cultured or as readily adaptable as I am.
As for what I like to do, I think it would be easier to describe what I don’t like to do. For some reason, I never concentrated on one sport or hobby for an especially long length of time. I’ve gone through the cello, trumpet, and even a bout with singing in bars with my friends for a year when it comes to music. Cheerleading, soccer, cross-country, and equestrian are my current and most developed and revered sports at the moment, although I’ve had experience with more sports than a lot of people. One of the things that I enjoy doing most is coaching and instructing in any of the above, but more particularly cheerleading and equestrian. I teach over-privileged children how to ride in the summers at a camp in West Virginia and for some reason I feel I get more accomplished in one day of teaching than I do in a whole semester of school. One day I would hope to coach a cheerleading team of my own, and maybe even coach people in show-jumping.
Currently I’m in school at the University of Illinois in a region of the U.S. that seems like it was specifically reserved for corn: Champaign-Urbana. I decided to come to Champaign-Urbana after I messed around with my decision for college for so long that I didn’t have a choice but to go to D.C. for school there. I can handle just about any environment and jump into any situation, but for some reason the idea of going to community college in the D.C. area didn’t sit too well with me. Upon working at a summer camp the summer before I was to start, one of my co-counselors mentioned that he was renting a house in Illinois and that they could use another roommate, along with that, there was an excellent school nearby. To make a long story short, I had to convince my parents that I wasn’t crazy since I tend to be very impulsive, and they agreed to let me go out to Illinois, 1000 miles away, to attend a college in the middle of a cornfield. It’s not as bad or odd as it sounds. The U of I is a very large school with everything that any person my age needs (alcohol and fast food, particularly burritos from La Bamba). However, being a true southern boy at heart, I’ve decided to return to my home state for my sophomore and remaining years in order to ease my parents’ minds about distance and whatnot. Illinois will always be an experience that I’ll remember, though, and I’m nothing but glad that I did it, I mean, who gets to live with their best friend, in a house, off-campus, and 1000 miles away from home for their first year of college?
Growing up in the Sutton family, there were always places that I loved to be. That’s Grandma’s house, Grandma’s lap, and Grandpa’s lap. Those are the three places that any of the Sutton grandkids were in their own world with Grandma and Grandpa, and being the oldest, I’ve had the privilege of having access to those three for 19 years now. My grandparents and I have always been extremely close, in fact, to this day, I still call them Mom and Dad. Grandma’s house tends to have an impact on those outside of the family as well. When I brought friends home for a weekend during my employment in West Virginia, my friends could say nothing but good things about Grandma’s house and still to this day ask when “we” get to go see Grandma? It’s that kind of hospitality that set Willie and Gwen apart from everyone else in this world and what makes their house more than a house, it’s everyone’s home. You know when people outside of your family can feel like family that you’ve got something good.
English/Composition is one of my strongest subjects, but I always have an extremely difficult time bringing it all to an end. I’ve found a very good remedy for this shortcoming; always end with a few quotes to get someone thinking. I’m sorry if I can’t remember who said what, but I’ll do my best and if I mess up a reference, I AM MAKING NO CLAIM TO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING QUOTATIONS:
“A man talking sense to himself is no less mad than a man not talking nonsense to himself”
--Monty Python (I think), The Life of Brian??????????????
“So long and thanks for all the fish”
Douglas Adams. The fourth book of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.
“Keep hope alive and don’t let the man get you down”
--Anonymous. I’m not sure who the man is, but screw him if he’s trying to get you down. Thank you to whoever wrote that or said it, cuz it is something that I constantly say.
“Candy man, tempting the thoughts of a sweet tooth, tortured by weight loss, program cutting the corners of a loose end, loose end, cut cut”
--Dave Matthews. No particular reason I like this one other than the way it sounds in the song.
“P-nut change it up, one time for ya mind, Watch out!”
--311, from my favorite song, Nutsymptom. You should try everything at least “one time for ya mind.”
“Do not attribute to malice what can be associated with ignorance”
--Anonymous. I have no freakin clue, if anyone could tell me who that might be, feel free to drop an email off with my uncle so he can cite it. Even though I think of myself as pretty well-rounded, there are always times and places when I don’t know how to handle a particular situation and this is a quote that everyone should know and live by because if they did, there would be a lot less misunderstanding in the world. Hate is a very applicable trait to this quote, seeing as how a lot of actions that are interpreted as hateful and malicious can almost always be linked not to a person or group’s contempt for something, but to their complete lack of knowledge, understanding and fear of what they speak out at or speak of.
These three rules are originals of the TGC ’03, and they are very important:
1) We don’t throw babies
2)Cologne is not a substitute for toilet paper
3)We don’t spit on our girlfriends
This concludes me (there I did it! I concluded) and that is that and in the words of my favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut: “So it goes…”
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Email Sean at bayoupants@Yahoo.com