What is Cool?

"What is cool?" my friend asked, after returning from a party last Saturday. She'd found herself at dinner with a group of tragically hip, twenty-something's and soon discovered her apparent "dorkiness" stood out like a like a neon sign in a coalmine. "What is it that makes them so cool?" she lamented. I paused to think. I thought for a long time. I realized my knowledge on the subject was woefully lacking. I'd learned to accept my goofball self and had no aspirations of "coolness". I would have to do some rather extensive research to figure this one out.

Let's look in the Collegiate Dictionary.
Cool 1: moderately cold: lacking in warmth. Hmmm . . . that could very well describe some of the people at the dinner party, but it isn't what we're after.
    2 A: marked by steady dispassionate calmness and self-control. Wow. Now, that might be something.
    B: lacking ardor or friendliness. We really are getting somewhere.
    C of jazz: marked by restrained emotion and the frequent use of counterpoint. If that wasn't referring to music, we'd be darn close.
    D: free from tensions or violence. A-ha! Not it.
Wait, there's something promising in good, ol' number seven:
    7 slang A: very good: EXCELLENT; also: ALL RIGHT
    B: FASHIONABLE 1 <not happy with the new shoes... because they were not cool -- Celestine
Sibley>.

I can always count on slang to get me through. This tells me what I'd always dared hope and never quite believed.
Sorry. I'm becoming rather emotional (sniff). I'm all right now. Here it is. Cool is subjective. There, I've said it. I feel much better.

Cool is just a state of mind. Sometimes cool is feathered hair (wince), disco and spandex. Sometimes cool is wearing pants slung down to your knees with your tighty-whities on proud display. Sometimes cool is inane discussion for hours on end on endoplasmic reticulum and sometimes cool is being able to blow up a balloon. Look online. Cool is vintage and bizarre. Cool is self-defense. Cool is conservation. A website promising to take me to the coolest site of the day took me to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Democratic Caucus Kidspage. Seriously. There are cool quotes and cool poems and cool gadgets and cool tools. I found my dorky self quickly overwhelmed by all this coolness and I went into a coolatonic state. And it wasn't fashionable.

After further reconnaissance, I have also discovered cool does not look like a lot of fun. Most people I have heard described as "cool" look "crabby". It must be a lot of work constantly coming up with just the right thing to say, at just the right time, to just the right person in just the right place. And you must be wearing just the right clothes (an expensive proposition), have just the right hair and take the time to have just the right workout to maintain just the right type of body. Oh, how could I forget, just the right job after going to just the right school. Living in just the right neighborhood in just the right house. You must drive just the right car with just the right coffee beverage in your beverage holder. How do these people keep up with all of this? No wonder they're crabby! I'm getting crabby just thinking about it. It's mind-boggling. If you travel, do you have to maintain the coolness standards of the places you travel to or is cool an international standard? Are people born cool? Can animals be cool? Can something be so uncool it becomes cool? And, this is the true question, if you don't care about cool, are you automatically cool? Answer me that!!!

After spending a few days pondering this, doing the research and polling the average person on the street, I've come to a conclusion. I am not cool, and I plan on keeping it that way.

Jennifer Jordan