This is my experience throughout school:  I wasn’t cool enough to hang out with the cool kids.  I wasn’t nerdy enough to hang out with the nerdy kids.  I wasn’t popular enough to hang out with the popular kids.  I wasn’t old enough to hang out with my grandparents.  That’s basically how I became a “floater” in high school.  I had acquaintances everywhere, I had casual friends all over, I changed best friends every year just like I changed the first day outfit every year.

I never felt like a loser because of this.  Never.  And I still don’t think that it made me a loser, because it wasn’t like I had a bunch of people that disliked me, I just didn’t have a bunch of close friends.  I wasn’t picked on or anything, I wasn’t made fun of (that I know of) and I didn’t get wedgies or stuffed into my locker.  Partly because I was twice as big as everyone else, partly because I was more of a harmless class clown than the subject of ridicule, but I keep in contact with very few people that I went to school with from the K-12 years.

Some of my best friends from middle school started drinking and doing drugs in high school, and since I didn’t really do that, we grew apart and I couldn’t hang out consistently with them.  I had a group of friends that I hung out with that were a year younger than me, and that didn’t always work.  I had another group of friends that were a year older than me, and that didn’t always work.  I could never get too attached to anyone, but I would never want to drift too far away either.

I played sports for awhile, but I was terrible.  No, let me re-phrase that: I played sports for awhile.  Football, baseball, basketball, and track & field, and I was the worst athlete you’ve ever seen in your entire life.  If you tried to imagine the worst athlete you’ve ever seen in your entire life, you still didn’t go far enough into just how bad of an athlete I am/was.  So playing on the football team didn’t help me become popular.  Spending life at the end of the bench  of the sophomore basketball team didn’t get me dates with cheerleaders.  Throwing a javelin 8 feet didn’t land me “Most Likely To Be Awesome!” in the yearbook.

So I wasn’t cool or popular, but could I at least find a home?  Not with the nerds.

I loved movies, and I loved Star Wars, and I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it’s not like I could keep up with a conversation of an actual Trekkie (offensive terminology I believe, not that I would know for certain) or Star Wars nerd.  I had some Magic: The Gathering cards, but I don’t know that I actually played in any real games.  I played some video games, but not intensely.  My hobbies, watching movies and reciting sports statistics, didn’t really make me a part of any group of people in high school and by nature can be rather isolating.  Even being a “class clown” (some would have probably just called me a “clown”) doesn’t necessarily help you either.  People would rather laugh from afar, and then stay afar as I’m being sent to the principal’s office.  I spent so much time in there that eventually she did become my pal.  The mnemonic device really works!  (I always remembered to spell mnemonic because of the episode of Full House where Stephanie incorrectly spells mnemonic.  How meta.)

“Hey, remember when Kenny said that thing about the teacher?”

“Yeah, haha.”

“Want to invite him to the party?”

“No.”

By college, things were able to change a little bit.  I made a few friends that I’ve had ever since and now that “cliques” and “cool” have not become a part of your societal status, I don’t have to worry about where I stand among my peers now that I am 30.  Still, it doesn’t mean that most people still don’t like to think of themselves as being “cool” once in awhile or having people that see value in you where others might not have.  That’s what I used to have with somebody.  That’s what I think I lost recently.

I grew up with one sister, one half-sister, and one half-brother.  My half-brother and half-sister are more than decade older than me and we never really lived together.  We have relationships, but it’s distant.  My sister is four years older than me and we did grow up together and the only three people that know for certain what our childhood was like are me, her, and our mother.  That’s not a bond that can ever be replaced, but still we aren’t that close.  She could not wait to move out of the house as a teen, and she never hid that fact, and she absolutely bolted when she could.  Being four years older than me, no teenage girl wants to be associated with their four-years-younger brother.  You would have thought that would be mostly a teenage girl thing, but since the time that she moved out of the house over ten years ago, I don’t know how many times my sister has actually called me.  Maybe five times?  None of them were to just see how I was doing.  And I don’t know how many emails I’ve received “just because”… Maybe a couple.

I was the youngest sibling of all, and most of the time I’ve still felt like an only child.  I know that all of my siblings would be there for me when I needed it, and vice versa, but none of them have ever really needed me.  I just wanted someone to provide some value to, maybe even to look up to.  Finally after college graduation, I became closer to some extended family and found some of that peace. but even that could only last for so long.

My mother’s cousin was not someone that I saw very much as a kid.  I remember going over there once, I might have only been thirteen or fourteen, and playing with her kids (or maybe just the one kid at the time) for awhile.  ”E” must have only been a tot back then and “B” might have either been a newborn or a very young toddler at best.  (It would make the most sense if she was a newborn, hence giving me a reason to go over there with my mom at the time.)  But fast forward to after college graduation, when I was now 23, “E” and “B” were both young ladies and over the years the family grew closer and I spent more time hanging out with my mom’s cousin and her kids.  For the first time, I felt like I had someone that needed me to be a brother, that needed some guidance maybe, and that I was actually going to be the “cool” older person that wouldn’t judge you and that you could confide in.

Me…. cool?!?  You’re darn tootin’! that i’ve already lost my “cool card” haven’t i?  aww nuts. /kicks dirt.

When I showed up to their house, I could see the excitement on their faces that I was there.  When I talked to E on the phone, I could hear how happy she was to be talking to me.  The same with B.  With this “new” extended family, I felt more like I had a purpose within a family, and that I could finally beat up boys for someone and give advice and be a cool dude.  In high school I thought it would make me a cool dude to do freestyle raps and sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with perfect pitch (that’s perfect-pitch, mind you) but no?  Does it not make me a “cool dude” to say that I have won two karaoke contests, know the lyrics to every song on the Boyz II Men “II” album, and have seen every episode of Saved by the Bell at least ten times?  If that doesn’t make me cool, then I don’t know what does.

I don’t know what does.

But to them, to E and B, I was just cool.  I didn’t have to prove anything, I didn’t have to be anything other than myself, I was just a second cousin that loved my family unconditionally.  We never got to spend too much time together, I moved to Los Angeles from Seattle only a few years after college graduation and have been back sparingly since, but when I was back up in Washinton we always have a good time.  Most recently we got together at a Thanksgiving function where I totally kicked ass on a Wii dancing game for tween girls and if that doesn’t make me unconditionally cool then I really am completely lost on the meaning of cool.

A few months ago, E told me that she wanted to come down and visit me in LA for her 19th birthday.  I don’t exactly know how to host a teenager in LA, but somebody actually wanted to come visit me!  She was very excited for the trip right up until the time that I picked her up from LAX and I could still hear that same “you’re cool to me, Kenny” in her voice that morning.  It just didn’t seem like long after that though when I started to switch from feeling like “cool older bro” to “lame Dad” or “weird Uncle” and NOBODY wants to be seen as an uncle.  I even hope that my actual niece and nephew see me as something other than an uncle.  Friend?  Sure.  Confidant?  Yes.  The kind of guy that if you threw a party would give you the biggest gift and the card attached would say “Thank you for being a FRIEND and NOT an uncle!”  Hell yes.  But never a weird uncle.

We spent all day Friday at Disneyland, and by that I mean we were at Disneyland from 8 AM to 11 PM.  Now I really started to feel old.  My feet and back had given out when there was “only” nine more hours left until the fireworks display.  But none of that bothered me as much as watching the look of admiration from my cousin evaporate and turn into a distance of “we ain’t got shit in common” that might be too far to travel; Even further than the 20 or so miles that we had trekked in Disneyland that day.  And it’s a reasonable reaction for her too because just what exactly do I have in common with a person born in 1994?

I said “Let’s go on the Roger Rabbit ride!!!” (with at least three real-life audible exclamation points indeed) and I don’t know what could be cooler than a 30-year-old man wanting to go on a Roger Rabbit car ride, but she hadn’t even heard of Roger Rabbit.

She hadn’t even heard of Roger Rabbit.

She wouldn’t know of Boyz II Men.  She’s never seen Saved by the Bell.  Golden Girls?  Get out of town.  That’s when you realize that an eleven year difference isn’t just eleven years; it’s a generation.  Maybe on some level this really did make me more like a “brother” figure, since I’m not close to my own actual siblings in that way, but on another level I also felt like I lost one of the last people that might have thought I was cool in the whole entire world.  For a time when you think family could bond, instead it seems like getting closer can sometimes pull you apart.

When I sent her off back to Washington and said “Goodbye” I knew I wasn’t just saying any regular goodbye.  I was saying goodbye to the kid I had once known and saying hello to the next phase of her being a young woman that didn’t need me to beat up any boys or provide any advice or be a big brother.  Maybe B would need that one day, with another four years of being a high schooler still ahead of her, but I also won’t be around for much of it.  Sometimes you just have to accept the situation you are in and find a way to mold it into the situation that makes you happiest.  I never had a group of kids growing up that I ever felt fully accepted me, and I never had a sibling that I felt ever really needed me, and I never had a label of being the most popular, or the smartest, or the coolest.

But labels don’t define you.  Labels are like the difference between “infer” and “imply.”  You could be inferring that I am lame, but I’m trying to imply that I am cool and if you didn’t notice my “ALF” t-shirt that’s your problem.  If you can’t tell that I’ve got LA Looks in my hair, sorry pal move along.  Maybe I’m not the broad definition of cool, maybe I’m not James Dean or Marlon Brando or AC Slater, maybe I can’t ride a motorcycle or even cite to you every character from Star Trek, but I’ve got other things that make me cool because cool is what you make of it.  Cool is being yourself and not giving a heck.  Cool is doing what you do because you love it, not because someone else does.

I’ve got family that’s there for me, even if we don’t talk all the time and even if they insist on growing up and getting older.  I’ve got friends that accept me for who I am and actually enjoy my jokes about politics and fart puns.  And I’m not going to shy away from showing my insecurities to the world in a blog post, even if it leaves me bare and exposed, because maybe it’ll relate to just one other person and let them see that they weren’t the only one.

I actually think that makes me pretty cool.

/breaks out into Adele “Someone Like You” in perfect pitch.  Perfect. Pitch.