THE SLOW BURN: COOL IS A MOVING TARGET

Laying eyes on me as I walked through the door, Grandma declared,
“BOY… are you some kind of fruit?!”

It was 1997.

That summer smelled like hot pavement, cheap cologne, and rebellion. I spent my days skating and blasting Korn, The Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Third Eye Blind, Deftones, Green Day, and Rage Against the Machine. I even picked up Three Dollar Bill, Y’all before anyone knew what it would become. A backwards Yankees 59FIFTY fitted felt like armor. Baggy jeans, a ball chain, Etnies…I thought I was dialed in.

Reality? I looked like a sausage on wheels.

Back then, “cool” had rules, and I wasn’t following any of them.

Middle school was simple. You were either a jock, a waver, or… whatever we were. I had a crew, a ragtag group of misfits, and the truth is, we were not cool. None of us could get a girl’s number, let alone the courage to ask. We didn’t fit the mold, and we knew it. But somewhere in the middle of all that awkwardness and noise, I genuinely believed I was onto something.

I spray-painted “FREAK” across a white t-shirt. I took a spray bottle full of bleach to my black jeans and turned them into something that looked like neon cheetah print. The school security officer made me change, but it didn’t bother me. From where I stood, I was sticking it to the man…and that felt pretty damn dope.

There was something about those bands, those looks, that pulled me in. They didn’t ask permission. They didn’t wait for approval. They didn’t care what anyone thought. They decided what was cool, and they owned it. So I followed that thread. I cut my hair and tried to dye it platinum. It didn’t come out blonde…it came out Cisco-white. Thong Song white.

Which brings me back to my grandma, standing there in the doorway, looking at me like I had completely lost my mind. I looked her dead in the eyes and said, as seriously as I could muster, “I am no kind of fruit.” Then I laughed and went to my room. Probably fired up Street Fighter II Turbo, but I don’t quite remember.

Looking back now, I don’t see a kid who wasn’t cool. I see a kid who didn’t wait to be told he was. And I respect the hell out of that.

Because here’s the truth, most people never quite grasp…cool isn’t a fixed standard. It’s not something handed down by the crowd or defined by whatever’s trending at the moment. Cool is subjective. It always has been. But somewhere along the way, most of us forget that. We start watching instead of deciding. We start adjusting instead of committing. We start chasing what’s already been approved instead of trusting what resonates with us.

But the people we looked up to, the ones who actually shaped culture, they weren’t cool because someone told them they were. They were cool because they moved first. Because they committed fully. Because they owned it without flinching, even when people laughed or didn’t understand. They didn’t wait for validation. They created it.

That’s the shift.

If you spend your life chasing “cool,” you’ll always be late to it. You’ll always be one step behind whatever the world decides is acceptable next. But if you lean into what you think is cool…fully, unapologetically, and with intention, something starts to change. People can feel it. Not because you convinced them, but because you convinced yourself first.

And that kind of conviction is hard to ignore.

So wear the thing. Say the thing. Build the thing. Light the cigar no one else understands yet. Do it because it resonates with you…not because it’s been stamped with approval.

Because “cool” was never about fitting in.

It was always about standing firm long enough for the world to catch up.