The End of Cool

Today I realized that I’m never going to be cool again.

Adam’s teenaged cousin and her friend were over at his grandparents’ house, which is where we’re staying until we go to Florida. I walked into the room wearing blue striped pants and a giant orange men’s hoodie with the logo of the Cleveland Browns on it (it was Adam’s, as I’m sure you can guess). Clearly, I was not attired fashionably.

“I like your hoodie,” the friend said.

“Oh, thanks,” I said. “It’s my husband’s, actually. He likes the Browns.”

“Good for him,” she said, giving me a Teenager Look. And then I realized that she thought I was ridiculous.

And after that, I suddenly knew: no matter how young or how inexperienced a person may be, when that person’s friends are suddenly all wives/husbands and mothers/fathers and lawyers/linguists/doctors/graduate students/activists/politicians, that person is no longer cool. When your friends’ status messages on Facebook are now about closing on houses and getting PhDs and weddings and ultrasounds and med schools, you have passed your “cool” expiration date.

I always thought I’d be able to hang on to my cool until at least my late thirties. I’m smart, I’m sassy, I’m cute, I’ve got wicked-cool glasses, and I certainly look youthful. I know plenty of people who are cool at any age— I mean, my grandma, at age 85, always seemed cool to me, even as a teen.

Now, though, I realize that my cool went out of style with the word “cool.” The other day, I was talking with my sisters, and I said something was “totally cool.” As the words came out of my mouth, they sounded like our parents did when they told us something was “hip” or “rad” or “far out”— I sounded dated.

And I am dated, in a way. I’m still young, but I’m a young grown-up, and as soon as you become a grown-up (which happens at different times for different people; I’ve known people who were grown up at seventeen, and people who, at forty, still hadn’t grown up) you suddenly begin to lose your cool. One day you look in the mirror, and you realize that something is different— your physical beauty no longer comes from the blush in your cheeks or the hard lines of your figure, but rather from the depth in your eyes and from the pre-Raphaelite softness of your body as it settles into itself. (The older I get, the more I feel that older woman are far more beautiful than younger ones— that there really is something far more lovely in the curve of laugh lines than in smooth, unblemished, uninteresting skin.)

My priorities have shifted so drastically over these past few years, and my wants and needs have changed so much, that sometimes I wonder if my seventeen-year-old self— dreamy and pink-haired— would even recognize this new woman, a woman who is learning to cook and to be patient and (sometimes) to not tell everyone everything about her life. I know that when we tell my sister Sarah that she’s going to change a lot between now and her twenties, she just rolls her eyes, but I wish I could explain to her just how true that is— the people with whom she is currently friends will probably be Facebook memories, the classes she hates now will have been completely forgotten, and she’ll have new friends, new crushes, new dreams. When I was her age, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I wanted to move to Thailand, and I wanted to adopt a baby and parent it all by myself. And now I’m married to a future priest and I’m working as a writer and I don’t want any babies right now and I couldn’t be happier with the person I’ve become. I also know that I'll keep changing, and I can't wait to meet 30-year-old Philosophy— a Philosophy who might have a steady job and a big apartment and maybe even a daughter or a son.

My seventeen-year-old self would laugh at my now-self. My seventeen-year-old self would think that my now-self is silly, and boring, and totally uncool.

And in that case, I think “uncool” is the best thing to be. Because I’m so happy being me— knowing who I am, and what I want, and getting the hang of responsibility and making good choices. I’d trade cool for comfortable in a heartbeat.

It turns out that the person I want to be isn’t cool. The person I want to be is fun, and smart, and kind, but she’s not cool.

Goodbye, cool. And good riddance!