How am I not myself?
I just watched I Heart Huckabees again. "Do you love me, with the bonnet?" I love that movie, especially around the holidays when the existential question comes to the forefront. And today I had a surreal moment that reminded me of a time that such questions were meaningless to me. When I was a child, my brother and I tried to be ourselves to such an extreme that we may have failed. If something was popular, we wanted nothing to do with it. Once when my Mom was given hand-me-downs from another family at church for us, we were looking through them and our cousin Heidi, hoping to be helpful, told us that they were very popular brand names. It was the opposite of helpful and we didn't wear the clothes. As I said in the last post, I have long been a self-styled iconoclast. That's the background you need to understand today's event. Dad introduced me to a lovely young lady at church, saying we knew each other when we were children. Well, we did, but we were hardly in the same age group. She was much younger. She remembers me quite well apparently, she said I was one of the "cool boys" and she said it with such conviction I almost felt cool now. Yet, I've certainly never tried to be a hipster. (Who can put up with the obligatory Republican?) It's odd to find out that your childhood was a lie. I was not myself. My inner picture (iconoclast, avoiding anything cool) didn't mesh with my outer image (apparently cool); when the two competing narratives are juxtaposed, I had a strange vertigo feeling. And the kicker is that, like every other primate operating on a fourth circuit level, I was viscerally happy to have a fetching girl bat her eyes and call me cool, even if it was in the past tense. In other news, today I got the wireless router working for my parents, cleaned their keyboard and monitor, went to church, turned on as much charm as I could muster at Aunt Rosie's Christmas get-together, and worked on my laundry. Not all in that order. I have not, however, felt the least bit of Christmas spirit. The closest I've come this year was at Greenfield village, and then it was only because of the incessant carolling. Perhaps Christmas spirit, like coolness, is something left in one's childhood.
You know, I've usually said that the reason you don't like chocolate, coffee or alcohol is to be contrary. I know you don't agree, but I have to believe in something this season.
PS I just had a typo that revealed an interesting anagram of this.
Posted by
Daniel |
12/25/2005 12:19:00 AM
I think you are cool.
Posted by
Unknown |
12/25/2005 04:49:00 PM
And I thought the only place you would ever be cool was in my eyes and that was for all the reasons you would never be cool to anyone else.
The chicky from church was definately not what she was back in your "cool" days...hope you took a good look.
Mum
Posted by
Anonymous |
1/01/2006 05:23:00 PM
well Scott, I never saw you as cool, but then I'm your cousin and family cannot be "cool." I don't know if I'll ever perceive you as cool in the social sense, but in the cousin sense you transcend cool. On another note, I've come to realize that perhaps Christmas is about children. I had several years where Christmas just made me sad, and then I figured it out. Without that pure childhood joy, either yours or something you can pick up vicariously, it just seems like the motions of a celebration. No wonder so many adults drink on Christmas. ha ha!! But until one of us decides to reproduce our families will remain childless.
Posted by
Melinda |
1/09/2006 06:59:00 PM
This post of yours is a little stale (it's age, not the writing... well, not the writing any more specicially than that of any other post...), and the thought of writing a comment has been lodged like a splinter in the back of my mind. Anyway "cool" is always a terribly subjective concept, and is usually something one may ascribed to many people, but rarely to one's self (barring the occasional narcisistic psychopath, of course...). When we were young, both of us were fairly visibly active within our church which may have been perceived as some form of status to somebody who wasn't as "involved" as we were. We, of course, had our own views of being "involved", ranging anywhere from dread to annoyance to dull obligation. At the time, it was just part of who we were.
Posted by
Piiwite |
1/23/2006 06:41:00 PM
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