Be Cool

I feel bad. For months, over a year now, the Obama campaign has been so cool. Suddenly, from Alaska ironically, the cool factor is up in the air. For everyone I believe, besides Matthew McConnaughey, being cool is hard work.

I remember trying to be cool, when all that pressure from the previous school year's annuals where kids signed, "Stay Cool," became more of a chore than a compliment. Middle school is the epoch of this time. I persuaded my grandmother to buy me Puff Daddy and the Family's "No Way Out" CD. I soon discovered it to be edited because we bought it at Walmart, which caused me to miss Busta Rhymes part completely in one song. Rap - cursing = not cool. I was still cool though, or trying, when I convinced my mom to get me a Tommy Hilfiger Logo Tee, the kind where the giant logo covers the entire abdomen and lower chest. When I got home, I put it on and as the shirt dropped past my knees, I realized that maybe this was not me, this was not my cultural fashion. My cultural garb was to be defined by Duck Head shorts and anything from The Gap. Despite my efforts to be desirable, none of the hot girls I liked liked me back. The problem lay in my image as a goody-good, and the bad boys smoking pot on the Double Churches playground after school were much more attractive than a guy destined for a medal in the Science Olympics.

It is such a struggle to be cool. How much money have I wasted on the idea? When my bride-to-be and I visited DC and New York last summer, we spent our days visiting monuments and museums and the nights taking tequila shots 'til dawn in Georgetown. That last statement is not entirely true. We usually ate dinner early, planned the next day's trip to the Air and Space Museum, and went to sleep by eleven, maybe ten-thirty. At the time, we were only one year removed from undergraduate Greek culture, where drinking on a Tuesday made sense because pitchers of Bud Light cost 2$. Two dollars! Of course, our first jobs after college consisted of teaching high school math in a blink of a town in the Mississippi Delta. As I rounded out sine curves based on the cracks in the sidewalk in DC, she could only laugh and roll her eyes at our combined dorkiness. I shed tears that trip because I thought we were going to miss a tour of the White House. Why am I telling you this?

Because cool doesn't matter. It is a state of mind. No matter what group of people you are surrounded by, they all have a standard of cool. Magic players may believe that your knowledge of Mana makes you the coolest Ajani Goldsmane in the Shadowmoor. Muscles and athletic ability be damned, tell them about your epic battles in Lorwyn. I may have no idea what that means, but you, the reader, might. And so it goes.

Current standards of cool may look like this:
1. iPhone - What, you don't own one?
2. Obama supporter - He has an iPhone, duh.
3. Hair product - Doubles as self-defense if spiked.
4. Hybrid - Oh, those environmentally-conscious bastards. More on this later.

Notice I did not put blogging on the list for obvious reasons.
It is too much hard work and too much money to be cool. When I was out west this summer touring the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone with a good friend, I looked around at all the families, America if you will, enjoying their vacation. As I stroked my day old moustache and counted rat tails, fanny packs, and smiles, I thought, "Man, cool is overrated."