Too cool for school?

There was an article in Saturday's Times by Henry Winkler, the actor who played the Fonz in Happy Days, about being cool.  There isn't much doubt that, having played a character that is the epitome of coolness, he is well-qualified in this subject.

In it he writes:

 Cool is not an attitude.  It is a way of being.  Cool is not a gesture, it is being authentic.  It's not something you can take on or take off; it's either there or not there.  Cool doesn't have anything to do with looks, with height, with weight.  Clothes do not make cool.  Cool is being authentic.  And then you are powerful.

This started me thinking about my school days, those excruciatingly awkward teenage years when all I wanted in life was to be cool.  The harder I tried, the further away my goal seemed and it seems to me that this is precisely the point that Winkler is making. 

Whilst never languishing quite at the bottom of the school social ladder, I was firmly in the middle stratus, some distance from being included in the cool group. I used to look at the girls (it always seemed to be the girls that defined the clique, and then the best looking boys clung on to them) and feel like an entirely different species. My gawky reflection with its uncomfortable body, static flyawy hair which was neither blond nor brown, didn't compare to their perfect appearances, straight white teeth, slim athletic bodies and effortless prettiness. They somehow managed to make the school uniform look trendy, whereas mine may as well have been a grey nylon bin bag. In fact, that may have been exactly what it was.

I'm sure its the same in every school that the cool girls were always the sporty ones too, the first to be picked for any team. They were leaping about the netball court, or running effortly around the hockey pitches whereas I struggled not to fall over my feet walking across the playground.

Being comfortable with who you are, physically and otherwise, is certainly simpler as an adult than as a teenager, for a start your body isn't changing every five minutes.  Later in life, you're more likely to have built yourself a niche, and are able to define yourself by a profession or hobby, or relationships e,g,: mother, father, husband wife, and take confidence from them.  Even in my thirties its still not something which I find easy to do - particularly at the moment coping with the impact of medication side effects on my body shape, and the possibiliity of having to give up a decade long career.

I think there are two things to remember from Winkler's comments.  Firstly, its about being comfortable in your own skin. To reach the lofty status of 'coolness', you need to be aware of who you are and to be totally comfortable, or at least ok with that.

Secondly, if you have to work at it, by definition you aren't cool to start with.  Its not something that you can try to be - if you aren't already, you never will be.  But I think that's probably ok too.