| I don't think anyone has every told me that I'm cool, except for this one pre-teen who saw me at the roller rink when me and my fellow college freshmen were at our wit's end for something to do. He admired that I could go backwards by just wobbling my legs in and out, making hourglass shapes with my skates, which then, were no in-line. But he himself, was not cool, either.
In fact, I don't think I've ever done anything that has warranted the label of cool . Most of what I do gets slapped with faux insults from even my dearest friends like, "You are insane," or "You are such a child," or "You are so bad." I'm 24, but my self confidence didn't reach the surface until I went off to college, when I was 17, so I've only had a few years to try things out. Whether my acts are dubbed cool or not is obviously not up for me to decide, since I've gotten so resolute in my tenacity towards my sense of humor and way of doing things that frankly, I couldn't give a shit .
I've made just a small handful of really good, reliable and consistent friends who have grown with me and watched me changed and all that warm fuzzy crap , that I've discovered that even if I could only be defined as cool by my fellow rejects , it is more than I would ever expect and far more than I really ever needed.
Having said that, I do sometimes, even still, long to be cool . To be cool by those I admire, whose respect couldn't hurt to have in reserve. I admit, when I see a gaggle of younger or equal aged people who obviously exude the confidence that I never had (no matter how chintzy and annoying it is to me now) or when I get to meet someone who I would surely recount as cool, I wish I could be included in their ranks. But, if everyone was cool, who would the fans be?
This is probably no big revelation, but I've noticed now, being one with my uncool-ness , perhaps, that the cool people in my life are simply being themselves against ever-gaining swells of pressure to be otherwise. The irony is that I had to learn from examples before I could apply it to myself. Even now, as with everything, I'm working on it .
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