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9 July 2003 (Wednesday): the miscarriage of cool

Reasons why I will never be "cool":


  1. I trip over things a lot.
  2. I think dumb puns are funny.
  3. I scratch things when they itch. (As a corollary, I cannot abide wedgies either.)
  4. Just when I think my taste in music is getting hip, I catch myself bopping to Justin Timberlake.
  5. I am perfectly willing to stick my butt up in the air while fishing around for an object trapped underneath furniture.
  6. Clubbing and going to bars bores the living daylights out of me.
  7. I can't drink alcohol. (This probably explains a lot about #6.)
  8. As for other drugs, I am incapable of casual use. For me trying stuff is so serious, you'd think dabbling in pot was equivalent to getting engaged.
  9. I am still mostly fashion clueless, and I try really hard to pretend I'm not.
  10. The more makeup I wear, the sillier I look.
  11. My appropriate-idiom-fetcher is chronically broken. ("Pleased to meet you." "Thank you," I say.)
  12. I'm one of those people who tells long stories with no good punch line at the end.
  13. By default I am nice and sincere, which means I am an easy target for sarcastic wit.
  14. I have no TV and a pitiful resume of movies watched.
  15. Thus, any joke with a pop culture reference will go right over my head.
  16. My dancing style involves a lot of uncoordinated flailing.
  17. I haven't got the self-confidence to carry off any of the above as the "new cool."

I realized most of these things about halfway through high school, and it was a tremendous emancipation: since popularity and trendsetting were hopeless ambitions, I could just be myself! I started dancing at proms. I stopped putting on makeup every morning. I surrendered to the fact that I would always look back on myself in five years, or two, or one, and wince at the things I'd so wholeheartedly embraced back then, whether it was poufy dresses, political idealism or Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. It was not worth my time, I decided, to chase after the elusive standards of cool. I would learn just enough to avoid social exile, and I would do the rest on my own terms.

Sort of.

Fast forward nine years, and being cool still seems like exhausting work, a task beyond me and not worth pursuing. I have set up residence in the heart of dork-dom, and I am comfortable with my neighbors. But I still want to be cool, despite my lofty rejections of it in theory. I want class and grace and a sharp sense of humor. Sophistication without pretension. Consciousness without self-consciousness. Command of a room, of a crowd, and of myself.

I still wish I could have it. And I wouldn't mind giving up that Justin Timberlake song for it, either.

posted by enjelani @ 07:03 PM PST

Replies: 12 comments

yeah, but you are one of the coolest "un-cool" people I know.

posted by echeng @ 09 07 2003 09:14 PM PST

You do have it, but exactly when you think you don't.

posted by theo @ 09 07 2003 10:27 PM PST

you're not alone in most of 1-17... :D
one couldn't ask for a better sister, whether or not she's cool. by being myself, i found that people find it amusing when you try to eat a sandwich in three bites. it spices up a boring lunchtime spent hanging around (of all places) trashcans in the quad (while others find it amusing to sing along rather badly with the all-american rejects, not justin timberlake)

posted by Liz @ 09 07 2003 11:26 PM PST

I'm totally there with you on points 1-13. I'm not as much with you after that, but nonetheless still quite uncool.

posted by wink @ 10 07 2003 12:35 AM PST

Cool...uncool...I think 'tis better to be totally oneself with no regrets. That in itself is cool in my book.

posted by Karin @ 10 07 2003 09:20 AM PST

heh... I wouldn't worry about #1-17. Cool? Maybe not. Cute? Definitely. Or do you not like being cute?

I've known enough people who try to pull off being cool. Some of the worst train wrecks are those abominable wastes of perfectly good oxygen who have yet to break out of a high-school mindset at an overripe age of 29 or 30.

In their search for popularity they've done nothing for themselves - or anyone else - but cultivate pointless affectations, use innocent folks as doormats, peons, and stepping stones, and indulge in appalling delusions of grandeur.

It's okay to try to be cool, but not the way they do it.

Additionally, I have very little time for celebrities, myself - and those people are supposed to be the 'height' of cool. They just don't do anything for me... they're not very relevant to my life, and putting them on a pedestal or trying to emulate them too closely could reduce me to trying to live up to someone else's strengths and talents without properly attending to my own. I'm much happier having the friends that I do, because of the impact they have on my life. These people, I can see... talk to... trade notes, sharpen wits with, get an education from - and I can also be there for them when things get rough. That's one of the most precious things for me, actually - being able to be there.

You fit my personal definition of 'cool' to a T. Some people try to become 'cooler' by enhancing themselves for their own sake. But I could point out more than a few past entries in this journal where you wish you were something more than what you are, not for your sake, but for everyone else's sake. It's the difference between yearning to be Conan the barbarian and aspiring to be a paladin. You've made a big difference to me - you've had a major impact on my life, and this even though I've only known you for, what, just over two years now? You're one of the many reasons why I am where I am right now, why I haven't yet given up hope.

You want to be a point of light standing fast against the darkness... not to make you feel self-conscious or anything, but I think that's a noble sentiment that's on a dimension several dozen layers higher than the self-conscious and frequently self-serving quest for cool.

Keep doing what you're doing, and being who you are (and that includes always wishing - and always trying, to be more). If it means anything, you've already helped me find my way out of my own darkness.

posted by m. mellow @ 10 07 2003 10:35 AM PST

Cool can be viewed two relevant ways - the effect you have on yourself and the effect you have on others. You have an amazingly positive effect on others. And you seem happy with yourself and perfectly grounded and real... How much cooler can that be?

The Truly Cool never think they're cool. Ironic. :-P

posted by bill @ 10 07 2003 01:51 PM PST

Hmm. Yeah ... you should really work on this.

posted by Zach @ 10 07 2003 05:16 PM PST

that wasn't a veiled plea for reassurance, it really wasn't. it was just an unpleasant realization that deep down, part of me still wants to be Homecoming Queen. egh.

but thank you to the compliment-givers and the wisdom-dispensers, nonetheless. :)

posted by enjelani @ 11 07 2003 07:42 AM PST

cool ain't such a bad word. there's a distinction between cool and hip. to me, cool is sort of a 'calm detachment' and an aura of genuineness. hip is all in appearance, something developed in order to present oneself to others in a particular way.

by these definitions, you're definitely cool to me. :) far cooler, in fact than i could ever wish to be.

if you trip over things and don't know what i mean when i'm quoting a tim roth movie, that's just 'charm.'

posted by soren @ 11 07 2003 07:56 AM PST

You confuse me, Enjelani. What do the things you say you want -- class, grace, sophistication, command of yourself -- have to do with the 17 things you say you haven't got? Nothing, so far as I can tell. The former is your idea of "cool"; the latter is someone else's idea.

I have here another 3KBytes of original wisdom waiting to be dispensed, but I think it's time to change the topic already :)

posted by beefeater @ 11 07 2003 02:05 PM PST

haha...your uncool list is sooo cool! :)

posted by carol @ 15 07 2003 11:02 PM PST