when will i be cool?

when i was younger, i used to fantasize that i would one day be cool. like, during grade 6, i imagined that my whole life would change once i went to junior high. you see, my junior high went from grade 7 all the way to grade 13. and grade 7-- grade 7 would be a place to make my mark, to reinvent myself for the years to come. i imagined that i would be a cheerleader. i used to take out books from the library on cheerleading, which i suppose was significant only in measuring the magnitude of my lameness, not my coolness-to-be. i would be a hottie. i would be POPULAR.

so forget that i managed to make a nerdly pursuit out of cheerleading. forget that i could sing along to the entire cast recording of Phantom of the Opera. forget that i was-- ahem-- somewhat tubby and wore pastel pink and blue clamdiggers on a regular basis, carefully matched to my peacock blue eyeliner.

i knew i was going to be cool. that high school was this magical place where people would see your inner light shining through.

but.

as much as i knew that i was destined to be cool, the cool kids knew that they were destined to STAY cool. and so all the popular kids from all the different feeder schools sort of glommed together into a massive imperial popularity crew conglomerate.

in that way, you know that way how cool/popular people instinctively recognize each other?

coolness was beyond my reach. for the moment.

i began planning for university.

university, incidentally, was very similar to high school, but more anonymous.

what i find strange and fascinating and perhaps worthy of sociological study, is how not only all the cool kids recognize each other, but how we all instinctively recognize the cool kids. still, now, even rolling down the hill to 31, i still recognize that there are cool and not cool people. the ins and the outs.

am i the only one who's still intimidated by the cool, the popular, those super-put-together people who could do the hair shelf thing in high school, and now have perfect ANTM type hairdos?

oh, what a big whine.
it's the diet. i swear, it's the soup diet.

u/v