Fast Food (Kinect Sports)

I had a friend in eighth grade named Jack who taught me what it meant to be cool, and that it meant being ashamed most of the time. Before then, I had never thought about which of my activities and pop culture choices were "cool" or "uncool."

Before then, I'm not sure I had much of a definition of coolness. When I was in 4th grade, I slept over at my friend Mark's house. His older sister had a group of her teenage friends over and they listened to Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam while exuding angst. I felt that was cool, but I didn't really have a definition for it yet.

In the time leading up to eighth grade, I figured whatever was on MTV was cool. I still didn't quite have a definition, but coolness was something that felt new and different enough that it felt slightly unfamiliar. There was also a vague sexuality slathered on top of it all that kept Nickelodeon promo spots off the cool list.

In essence, before I hit puberty, coolness was puberty. Coolness was angst and acne hidden under long hair and trailing off and not making eye contact.

After I started to go through puberty, coolness was much more difficult to define. When I was 13, Jack felt like the arbiter of cool and I just wanted to be around him so he could guide me through this frightening new world that was decorated with minefields only the trained eye could see.

Music was cool, but only if it was music that wasn't delivered through the radio or MTV. Music through those channels still had the potential of being cool, but only if it was ironic, which meant that it was so uncool by definition that the thought of someone cool sincerely enjoying it was so preposterous it paradoxically added another layer of coolness on top of them.

At first this seemed like a dangerous art of which only the truly cool were capable. Because of my low rating on the coolness index, I had to stick to pre-approved music choices in order to cultivate a higher coolness rating. But the truly cool could bend time and space around their own barrier of coolness and convert anything into cool fodder, even the most uncool things imaginable like Neil Diamond or Jesus Christ Superstar.

Over time, though, this idea seemed less dangerous and more like a safe zone. Coolness became living in a perpetual state of fear of slipping up, so the only thing safe was that which was so awful it could never be cool. The blanket of irony was also the only safe space to express sincere emotions.

I had different points in my life where I worried about being cool, or felt like belonging in the group I thought was cool was more of an achievement than belonging in the group I thought was uncool. I never felt like I was cool, never felt like I belonged, but I thought maybe if enough people I thought were cool seemed to like me than I could trick other people into thinking I was cool, which might make me believe it myself.

The funny part is that coolness is such a microscopic moving target. Coolness is defined within the parameters of a tiny social setting and the definition is only agreed upon by a tiny minority inside that social group. The cool teenagers aren't cool to anyone outside adolescence, the cool college kids aren't cool to anyone outside of college and peak coolness occurs somewhere around 23.

After that peak, coolness becomes either a positive or a negative abstract thought. It either represents the negative feeling of not belonging or it represents the positive ability to shrug off the criticisms of external forces and staying true to an interior monologue.

Eh, fucking hell. Some days it just doesn't come together. Just watch the video of me sweating my fat ass off.