Becoming Uncool

I can finally say that I am no longer utterly obsessed with being “cool” without blatantly lying. It only took the better part of 27 years. (Hey, I haven’t had the opportunity to have children yet—a change that instigates serious personal growth—so give me a break!)

Admittedly, desires to be cool, to wow others, to create some bizarre sense of social superiority with my presence, still cross my mind when standing in large crowds or upon finding myself surrounded by “hip peeps.” Said urges have thankfully become increasingly rare and those that remain are quickly subsiding. I’m not exceptionally cool by nature—although I sure used to think I was—and the stress from trying to constantly compete is simply not missed. Whew.

Losing the desire to be cool—a futile and worthless aspiration ingrained in the social subconscious from early childhood—is a process. You don’t wake up one day, look inward, and realize “wow, I don’t care about dating babes or wearing sleek suits in hip bar/restaurants anymore.” The process is slow. It starts when you look at “in” things people around you are wearing and think 1) “I don’t dress like that,” and 2) “I don’t care if I dress like that.” You even eventually say to yourself—and this is a big one—“I’m glad I don’t feel the NEED to dress like that.” You know you are getting older and significantly less cool when you realize that impressing the strangers next to you with your hip duds or sleek suit/dress is not nearly as exciting a prospect as going home and putting on your most comfortable pair of pajama pants.

Another sign of “losing your cool” (like my double entendre? Haha!) is a growing inability to name the singer of the latest radio hits. Yes, you enjoy the song playing on the car stereo, you know the words, and you still love to jam; you just don’t know the name of the twenty-one-year-old singer whose tunes you are jamming to. More and more, I don’t care who the singer is, I just know I like the song. (For purposes of self preservation, in the sense of social redemption, I know how to work an iPhone and I do have a Twitter account. Being uncool does not necessarily mean being technologically unaware.)

You know you are losing your need to be cool when a large portion of your favorite entertainment is retro, but not because retro is popular; your favorite shows, movies, tunes, video games and books are retro simply because you are getting old. You look back at movies like “The Goonies,” “Monster Squad,” and “Ghostbusters,” songs such as “Basket Case” by Green day (released almost fifteen years ago!), Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991), and Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” (1996) and can’t believe you’ve been singing along for almost half your life. You see video games like Mario 64, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Resident Evil and suddenly yearn for old school, pixilated graphics and less than THX high-definition surround sound.

I’m thrilled to be seriously uncool. More than anything, I’m happy that I haven’t changed from wanting to be the cool high school/college guy to wanting to be cool in the bar hopping college grad “business scene,” a common phenomenon for singles in their late twenties and early thirties. In all honesty, what is the difference between the two?