Cool

I have no experience being cool.  I do not state this for pity or to be corrected in that socially mandated, southern way, “Oh sure you do, honey.”  A poll of my schoolmates would reveal I was not cool (if they answer truthfully and remember who I was).  I was not socially significant.  And, really, it’s okay.  I had the gift over my school years of some truly excellent friends and went largely unabused as nerds go.  I embrace my life in exactly its imperfect form.      

Merriam-webster.com offers the second entry listed under slang for cool as “fashionable, hip.”

I know now it doesn’t matter how the social hierarchy forms in school but I am reliving the learning process through my children.  My 5 year old daughter comes home from kindergarten knowing which girls have Sketchers sneakers and that they won’t play with her because she doesn’t want to chase the boys.  She wants to play something else but no other girls want to play anything else.  My son refuses to team up with the robust boy who insults his smaller classmate, a friend.  My middle schooler chooses not to sit with a group of classmates who gossip about someone she likes but this means she may have to sit by herself.  Refusing what they do not want to do, doing what they know is right, having their own voice is already putting my children on the outs of the crowd.  This I do have experience with – beginning to realize you may not be fashionable. 

I have a gathering of folks on the outs to be with and I love them.  In the fringe and the frazzle we embrace each other without much notion of cool.  But most of us survived times of painful expression and hit or miss relationship experimentation to get strong enough to orbit the center from a safe and generous distance.  Being academically motivated and/or politically outspoken and/or artfully expressive and/or different in fashion and/or uncoordinated and/or displaying dodge ball welts we figured out who we are.  Now I want to protect my kids from similar strife but perhaps there is no other way to gain the strength of one’s own voice but to practice it.

I remain as baffled today as when I was twelve about why anyone would cash in a fellow human for rank or intentionally be unkind to gain a laugh.  I have limited hip skills to pass to my children.  I can buy stylish shoes and skinny jeans.  I can be proud of their individuality.  I can offer hindsight that being cool seems like the only option for happiness but life actually goes beyond these formative years and levels out.  They will not believe me. 

Ultimately, we are who we are – cool or otherwise.  My kids’ analysis of the implications of social strata may be an endowment from me (nature or nurture?).  I can attest it does not lend itself to the prospect of being cool!