Okay, I realize it. I am not cool. I used to think I was ... but no longer. There was a time years ago when I dressed cool ... talked cool ... looked cool ... and was just plain cool. Now? Well, not so much.
When I was younger, we all wore these skin-tight blue jeans. So tight, in fact, that I had to lay down on the bed to zip them up. I even had a friend who kept a pair of pliers by her bed to grab on to her zipper so she could zip her pants up. Yep, we were cool. Gorgeous and cool in our skin-tight jeans. We'd slither and slink through school or the clubs, knowing that we were absolutely amazing and everyone else wanted to be us. We had the "cool" look: skinny, dressed in jeans that looked like they were painted on, silky shirts, high heels, and big hair. Shoot forward to the present. If I were put into skin-tight jeans now, I'd look like a sausage wrapped in bread wrapped in another piece of bread wrapped in Saran Wrap. Not pleasant. Now I live in elastic waisted athletic shorts (the roomier, the better), baggie t-shirts, messy hair, and flip-flops (that we used to call thongs, by the way.) Definitely not cool.
Back in my cool days, I'd stay up all night long, wearing my skin-tight jeans dancing the night away in my Candy heels. We danced The Hustle or mimicked the dances off of Saturday Night Fever, mouthing all of the words along with Barry Gibbs. Now, I'm yawning at 9:00 ... and darn proud of myself if I make it to 11:00 without falling asleep on the couch. The most embarrassing part about being uncool and having to go to bed early is that when I DO stay up late, I wind up getting the sleepy sillies. I'll laugh at the most ridiculous things, and it's not just a polite little laugh, but a snorty, bellowing guffaw. Then, usually I wind up in hysterics, alternating between snorting, crying, hiccuping, and shrieking. My family usually hides from me when I'm in this state of mind and just encourages me to go to bed. Yep, not cool at all.
There was a time when the way I spoke would let people know I was up-to-date and obviously cool. I knew all of the latest slang and when to use it in the most appropriate way. And, I understood what everyone else was saying, too. I also vaguely remember laughing at people over 30 who said "neato" and "keen" or "groovy". I have learned that cool language, once again, is not the case for me anymore. It's not cool to tell people that you're "fixing to" go to the store. If you say a boat was "tumped over" or someone's shirt is "tucked out", you get some mighty strange looks. You don't roll up a "winda", you don't use a "yella" crayon, and you definitely don't eat "bowled aigs" (boiled eggs, for those of you that need an interpreter). You don't call people "cutie patooties", you don't laugh when someone "toots", and you don't mention your "bottom" or your "tummy". To me, bad is really bad ... phat is just plain stupid ... and hot is another one of those danged hot flashes. My language, according to my family, has seemed to evolve over the years to a mixture of backwoods hillbilly refugee and old fogie (another old person term, by the way).
Nope, I'm not cool anymore. Strangely enough, it's really fine. My four-year-old grandbaby thinks I'm hilarious and incredibly awesome and pretty and all kinds of wonderful adjectives. Cool is really seriously overrated ... unless, of course, you ARE experiencing one of those ridiculous hot flashes and then it's really awesome!
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