Hi, everyone. This one goes out to all of you who have never been one of the "cool kids:" that inchoate group of folks who, for whatever reason or another, everyone else looks to for social cues. Or the group of people who prize a set of qualities that is hard to describe but which does not necessarily include talent, skill, diligence, or anything measurable. The clique. The In Crowd. Or, as the title of this little essay states, the Cool Kids.

I'd love to tell all you high school students that the idea of the Cool Kids doesn't survive past high school. That your exclusion from the Cool Kids' group will one day not matter, and that the Cool Kids will see that your skills and passion are not just worthy of respect but necessary. Or even that one day, the Cool Kids will crash and burn and come crawling to you for a job, since by then you've been building your business and slowly accumulating wealth and privilege.

As you can imagine, I can't tell you that because, sadly, it's not true. Not completely so, at least.  My dears, the Cool Kids still reign in the adult world. Being talented or smart or passionate doesn't trump the Cool Factor. If you're waiting for your time to come, for the tables to turn and the social order to be upended, you are waiting for something that won't ever come. 

The geek won't inherit the Earth.

I was talking to a friend of mine (someone who was kind enough to come to my recent book signing and even promote it herself) who really crystallized this for me. We were having one of those parking lot discussions where true academic wisdom is to be found when she talked about the Cool Kids. Both of us, in our way, had been excluded from the Cool Kids, and it was still happening.

It's not all bleak, though, my fellow exiles!

While I can't say that the Cool Kids always get their comeuppance, or that hard work, competence, and kindness always pays off, what I can say is that you will come to the realization that success is something you define yourself. I know that sounds simple, but you'd be surprised, Young Person, how difficult that is to live. You think that when you become an adult and don't have to worry about grades and dates and social media likes and all that it'll be easier? I'm afraid grades will be replaced with salaries, dates with spouses, and social media...well, that one may stay the same. Making sure you're in Honors and AP classes for the prestige will be replaced with making sure you get the promotion or the title on your office door. The rat race never ends--you just get put into larger mazes.

And yet...

You can make it. You really can. When you suffer a loss because you're not a Cool Kid, or get snubbed because you don't know someone or something you ought to, go back into yourself and your passions. Go to the indie theater to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch, design your own video game, or even just sit at home and play with your cats. You won't be a Cool Kid, but you will come to realize you don't need to be one to be happy. 

Be seeing you!

When you have a hard week (hard week is of course relative) it's comforting to know people around you sympathize. They offer support and listen to your diatribes and know when it's time to try and offer solutions and when it's time to just listen and be present. They open up about troubles of their own and relate them to yours to show you you're not alone. But most of all, they offer time. I've made some demands on some people in my life recently to listen to me (and I can be quite the long-winded bore at times) and they have all, unfailingly, come through. I've made people late for other appointments I'm sure, or taken them from their homes and families (not by abduction, mind you) while they patiently wait for me to be done talking.

Those kinds of friends are ones to cherish. I'm glad I have all of you--you know of whom I speak.

But there's a whole different level to support, and fittingly, it comes from a single person in my life whom I am constantly amazed I have. My friend of about thirty-five years and my wife of over twenty-eight, Sue.

See, what she did was empathy, and when Sue does empathy, she does it all the way. I was feeling slightly miffed--a little bit irked, as it were--and she took that and ran with it to boiling rage. Where I was saying "I would have rather that hadn't have happened" she was cursing to the gods, both current and ancient. In other words, she became my knight in shining armor to my damsel in distress.

It's nice to have a knight once in a while. And I look pretty good in one of those flowing dresses, let me tell you.

My point is that it is rare in the extreme to have someone in one's life who will not only sympathize and listen and value your company and validate your problems. But it is a unique person who will make your problems her own, who will take your feelings and feel them herself. I love Sue for many, many reasons (I've been talking a lot about her in class, and I said "I don't love Sue because she is my wife: she's my wife because I love her") but right now, chief among them is how much my life is hers. 

​Be seeing you!