My recent trip was a rather in-your-face reminder of my lack of cool. Hanging out with a group of twentysomethings who love to snowshoe into the back country to snowboard, carrying ice picks and “avy” beacons, did not do wonders for the ego of this suburban mama.
My jeans are not cool. I only have one pair that doesn’t have a hole in the knee, and they are just a smidge too short and too light of a wash.
My snow pants are not cool (how could anything called “snow pants” be). I have the big, baggy, kiddie kind, not the sleek, stretchy, sexy kind.
My winter boots are so not cool that I left them behind in Colorado (they were also six years old and the zipper was starting to break).
My everyday winter coat is not cool. It’s as baggy as the snow pants and a really blah shade of gray. It’s also six years old and wasn’t even new when I got it. (My spring/fall coat, however, is cool. It’s turquoise with a Paul Frank monkey print lining the hood.)
My hair is not cool. I am starting to worry that it’s less “layered, longish bob” and more “mommy mullet.”
My car is not cool. I drive a dented station wagon.
I know nothing of the latest music or movies.
Even my phone is not cool (as Binkytowne will be happy to confirm). White, flip open, pay as you go, tap out a text message in 10 minutes, no data plan, for emergencies only.
But guess what? I’m moving into the ’00s. Yep. I got a smartphone. And you can read all about it.
And if you want to tell me how cool I am, or how uncool you are, that’d be cool, too.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
No tattoos and I’m unwilling to wear uncomfortable shoes. I guess that pretty much rules out coolness for me.
My phone is also a flip (I feel like I am asking Scotty to “beam me up” every time I use it). Can’t wait to hear your opinion of the smart phone as I am thinking of getting an iphone or something similar. The thought of having to choose among thousands of apps has me stressed already.
I feel uncool every time I go to the gym wearing my baggy sweats and old nikes. Everyone seems to have these amazing cool stretchy workout clothes. I keep saying I will reward myself with some of these when I loose 10 lbs. So far it hasn’t happened!
You know, I’ve been struggling with my lack of cool, too.
But then I see that it’s the 80s that are coming back as cool. And the ones who are really investing in that version of cool are the ones who are too young to remember it the first time around. This makes me feel a bit better.
That said, I’d really like to upgrade my old flip-phone with the ancient texting.
i’m totally uncool.
Ice picks and what? I’ve never heard of an ‘avy beacon’ so I guess I’m out right now.
I have one pair of cool jeans, ie, from AnnTaylorLoft. They are not skinny leg jeans because I can not pull those off to save my life. They are , however, dark denim which makes them cool, I guess, but they are low rise so my stomach hangs over the top and negates the cool factor so it’s pretty much a wash.
I am not cool because I have an iPhone, but it does allow me to pretend to be cool. Sort of a non-cool smokescreen.
How am I uncool? Let me count the ways:
1. no facebook page
2. no sense at all of what the kids are listening to these days
3. i have a pixie haircut
4. i don’t know how/am incapable of twittering
5. my winter coat is too long– cool kids seem to be wearing short ones with a belt
I could go on, but it’s too depressing.
I love that outdoor clothing is now made to fit a woman, and flatteringly so — I could do all my shopping out of the Athleta catalog — but it is dismaying that the concept of “looking cool” has been carried into the woods!
My time on the Breck slopes hammered home how uncool I am too. I wore the CB jacket I bought in college, adorned with all the pins from places I’ve skiied. One of the lift operators was kind enough to comment, “Huh, I remember how popular those were back in the 80′s.”
I’ve been working with teenagers almost since I was one (an un-cool one), and I still have one barely-teen sister, so I don’t know I ever had a fair shot at being cool. When my youngest sisters were 10 and 12, I told them that when they became teenagers they’d be glad to have a cool big sister like me.
So not true.