I've never been cool. I will never be cool. I'm destined to be on the outside for the rest of my life. You'll see. Here...
High school was especially indicative of this. I was certainly not in with the cool people. I didn't want to be with the very uncool people. I wasn't really around many people at all. I probably was most closely associated with the music/theatre/brainy people, but I wasn't in music, theatre, or role playing games, so I wasn't really in.
I was never into drinking. I didn't drink 'til I was 19 and living in Toronto. Even now, I don't even like beer. I couldn't tell you where there's a beer store nearby. I wish I knew, cuz there are two cases of empties still sitting in my kitchen from the last tenant (who was a very good-looking jock-type cool guy).
I don't like food that's hip and cool. I don't even know what that means. I don't like butter on my sandwiches. I don't like egg salad, or potato salad, or tomatoes, or a whole bunch of things that normal people eat.
It's cool these days to hate McDonald's. Well, I didn't like working there, and I hate what they did to my girlfriend (that's a story unto itself), but I like the food. It's hip to say McDonald's food is shit, but I enjoy it. I could probably eat it every day.
I've never had a cool job, really. I've worked at McDonald's, a warehouse drug store, a computer store or two, and now at a radio station. You'd think that was cool, but I work at perhaps the most un-cool radio station in town. (Even if ratings are up.)
I've never been cool wherever I've worked. I'd get in brawls with people at McDonald's because I was so much smarter than them, and my condescending attitute let them know it. Even at my current job, people think I'm a nice guy, but kind of creepy and pervy and generally weird. Hardly anyone takes me seriously there. It's my own fault, I guess.
I think going to Ryerson was cool (even if Ryerson didn't think I was cool), but people don't give Ryerson any respect as a university.
I don't drive. Even though it's almost cool not to drive, it's still not cool to take transit. It's cool to bike, I suppose, but not with my totally un-cool bike helmet and not-particularly-flashy bike. I've always had sucky bikes. The only trophy I ever won as a kid was for the bike rodeo, and at that time I had a blue plastic basket and a bell on my bike.
I don't play sports. I don't watch sports. I don't know anything about sports. I call stupid people "hockey players" and call hockey players "hockey players." Hockey players always used to beat me up when I was little, cuz I wasn't cool. The closest thing I've ever done to sport was my involvement in pro wrestling, and that was long after wrestling was cool.
I play guitar. I suppose that's cool, but I'm not very good at it, and most of what I play is Rush, cub or Spin Doctors, anyhow.
I'm not into music that's cool. And if I happen to listen to a band that's cool, I don't listen to them enough to be cool with other people. Rush has never been cool. Ween is cool to some, but I'm not the Ween-lifestyle kind of guy. Even with cub, I like them a lot but I don't have a record player so I'm missing out on a whole ton of their stuff.
My glasses aren't cool. My contacts are cool for about 8 hours, then they start to burn.
My shoes are cool enough, but not on me. It's ruined by my socks, I guess.
My clothes -- yeesh! I've never worn clothes that are "in" or cool. I met a girl once who said I was the sexiest man in the world on the phone, but when she met me, she said my outfit ruined the entire thing. So she took me to le chateau or someplace to look at clothes. She dressed me up in all the hippest, coolest homeboy clothes. It was ridiculous. No way. Even when I'm dressed up, and you'd figure you can't go wrong, I still look out of place cuz I'm chubby and nothing seems to fit like it should.
I've never had cool hair. When long hair was in, I had short hair. When short hair was in, I grew my hair (and a full beard...). Now my hair is simply "not uncool." It looks pretty good, frankly, the best it's ever been.
I've always had computers that weren't cool -- the ZX81, the TI 99-4/A, the Coleco Adam, a 286, a 386....finally I have a decent computer, but it probably won't be long before it sucks too. I had orphan video game systems, too -- ColecoVision instead of Atari, Sega Master System stedda Nintendo, TurboGrafx-16 stedda Genesis.
Even when it's been cool to be "not" cool...or "not" anything...I dunno. When it was cool to be a geek/nerd type, I wasn't it. When looking sloppy was cool, I couldn't even pull that off. Even though I'm a loser, and being a "loser" is cool, I'm still not cool. Losers think I'm a loser. Just when I start feeling I'm cool because I'm around someone who's really a loser, they end up being popular. I think the odds are vastly against there being a time when whatever I'm doing at any given time will acciden tally be cool.
This zine isn't cool. I've never been in with the zine people. A few of them have been nice to me, but I've still always felt like an outsider. I go to the zine festivals and feel like I did at the one high school dance I went to. People don't buy my zine. I get bad reviews in Broken Pencil and Exclaim. Mind you, the people who love my zine really really love my zine. Maybe you're one of them -- in that case, I thank you. But I suppose most people think it's a piece of shite. Y'know, when I'm at work, I press a little red button and my voice goes out to thousands and thousands of people, who probably think I'm cool (but they don't know me). Only dozens of people will ever read this zine....yet this matters a lot.
I don't think I'll ever be cool. It's sad, really. I believe that if being a self-deprecating pitiful loser ever becomes cool, I'll suddenly have a big burst of self-esteem and be outside that crowd. *sigh*