As a child, Allen was like most other American boys, playing baseball and fantasizing about the major leagues. The one crucial ingredient missing: talent. The discovery of the opposite sex explodes the ballgame and he quickly foresakes his homerun heavy hitter hopes and focuses all his energy to become the focus of the pretty girls and the popular kids. Despite his efforts to stick out, he remains invisible.

Failing in his attempts to garner the attention of the most popular girl in school, or, for that matter, of pretty much anyone in his school, Allen decides the best method for becoming visible is to become a college student, certain that his erudition, average though it may be, and his choice of adopting a Bohemian lifestyle will allow him to stand out from the hordes of other above average, carefully non-conformist young people attending college. Unfortunately, Allen Johnson remains annonymous.

When Allen is in his mid-twenties, he discovers one day that he has become the very antithesis of what he hoped to be. He works in a non-descript cubicle, lives in a tiny house in a subdivision of identical tiny houses near a small, invisible city in the Midwest, and has a wife and child whom he struggles to find time to see. In a final attempt to break out, Allen decides he must disrupt the pattern and return to college to distinguish himself as a master's student and a teaching assistant, determined to use the bright light of the academic life to shine forth. This is the point at which Allen Johnson must ultimately devolve in order to emerge as the man who has it all: happiness.