Why Can't I Be Cool?

I’ve been told to lighten up on the blog so here goes.

Why can’t I be cool? Maybe the bigger question is why can’t I have the ability to totally block out reality when I look in the mirror and see myself?

Deep, I know. Let me explain by sharing this experience I recently witnessed.

I was at lunch at a sushi restaurant. While awaiting food a guy comes in with his wife. Somehow I knew they were married but I’m not sure how. But that’s not the point. Maybe they were dating. Whatever. I hope for her they were. The point is the guy somehow got up that morning, looked in the mirror and saw cool. The sad thing is the girl (probably his wife) thought he was cool too. And I can’t figure out how because he really was not.

She actually seemed normal and was dressed normal except that she bought-in to his attempt at cool and that just made me sad. Let me see if I can describe him because I am "positive sure" (as opposed to "negative sure") you’ll get my point.

Think Kevin James but not cool. The guy was a bit large but I’m sure he saw muscle. He wore knee-length shorts, brand spanking new white Adidas and Adidas white socks. I knew this because the socks said “Adidas” right on them, and were perfectly centered on the outside of each sock, both right and left.

So far the package was okay but clearly trending downward on the cool meter. He had on a black tee shirt. Still okay. But on the dome he wore a beret. Backwards.

Why? Who said that was cool? I can see a baseball cap because it keeps the sun off your neck. Theoretically. But a beret on backwards can only be so to make a statement that you are cool or have some fashion sense or something.

Also, who told him he could do it? Surely it’s not a personal decision one can make. Certainly someone has to authorize it, right? But that’s not the thing still.

He was wearing sunglasses even though he was now inside and outside it was overcast and the sun wasn’t out. I know, many that have gone before have made that statement but that’s still not the thing. He eventually noticed he couldn’t see and took them off and here is the deal: he hooked them on his tee shirt ON HIS BACK and not on the front like regular people do.

I know this wasn’t authorized and only a really, really cool person would be allowed to do something this aby-normal. He didn’t have anything else hanging on front so there was room. It had to be a fashion statement that was meant to tell people – cool person in the room, keep your distance, pay homage, keep the immediate area around him clear, give him room to operate and maneuver, and above all, pay attention, more cool stuff to follow. And there was.

He had this mannerism about him that said, "man of the world." He knew what he wanted to order and didn’t need to condescend to look at the menu. But his office was open to answer his wife’s questions about the various foodstuffs. She quiz him on different things and in a very detached manner he’d answer but you could tell his mind was on more important things like, “I wonder if I’d be cool if I turned my Adidas socks so that the Adidas wording was facing inward.” But he could muse these things and multitask by answering her. Worldly things were second nature to him.

She asked him stunners like, “What is tempura?” Oh, and she started every question the same way, “This is a dumb question but …” His answer, given far too loud but apparently he sensed his wisdom shouldn’t be limited to just her but the rest of the folk, “Tempara (yes he said it that way) is deep-fried but not as heavy.” Profound!

Eventually they ordered: him a chicken teriyaki bowl of rice and her a lunch salad with ranch. Did I tell you this was a sushi bar? Next came the coup d'état of all coolness. Let’s call it the too-cool-to-follow-the-normal-sequence-of-events move. He ordered without looking at the menu and answered all of his “sweethearts” cultural food questions but after ordering, as he prattling on about something, he picked up the menu and again multi-tasked by talking and perusing and then, I kid you not, in mid-sentence he all the sudden said, “GIVE ME A DOLLAR” as if the fate of the world hung in the balance and was contingent on this buck.

Clearly he was too cool to keep money and where would he put it anyway, you can't hang it on the back of your shirt. But everyone could sense the immediacy of his need for this buck. She didn’t question but yanked a dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to him. I suspect she had learned over time to not stop the creative flow of coolness when ordered to do so.

He grabbed it and bolted up to the cash register and told the girl staffing it, “Instead of chicken teriyaki I want the ‘cubbie beef.’” He then tossed the dollar bill on the counter and walked back to his seat. As he sat back down after this act of creation he told his girl that he loved the "cubbie beef" but it was an additional dollar. His explanation was accepted without comment and it was clear that his wife accepted these moments of profound and absolute coolness without surprise or even query.

I was nothing short of “bumfuzzled” if I may quote Chandler or Ross or one of the Friends. First off, the person working the cash register hadn’t taken their order so I’m not sure how that order change was orchestrated in this English as a third language environment. But I guess cool people don’t worry about those things.

Next, in this place you paid for the food after you ate. So what was up with the dollar? Too cool to follow the paying sequence I guess.

Lastly, "cubbie beef?" How can you be so far off on pronouncing Kobe Beef and still think your cool. If he’d ever heard it prounounced it surely would have resonated with him that it’s pronounced the same as his favorite basketball player, Kobe Bryant.

And that’s what I’m saying, why can’t I be cool like this guy?

I could never go out dressed like that and do those kinds of things in a public venue. I just couldn’t. I would be far too nervous someone would observe my faking and write it up on a blog.

Kenny Rogers - The Last Ten Years (Superman) Video

Watch this. One of the best songs in a long time. We've all lived through all these things. Puts them in perspective.

Dignity: The Hard Way

Somehow, somewhere in life, and surely not intentionally (wink, wink), you will tick someone off who you really should not have; someone you need or are going to have to interact with in the course of your life. But that’s not the deal. The deal is that you didn’t mean to tick this person off but they zing you back real bad, and in public. How rude! You want to say something clever (or worse) back. Freeze that moment in time. What should you do (as opposed to what did you do?)

Unfortunately this happens far too often. The operative situation here is that you are a good person and doing the best you can in everything you do but somehow you angered someone unintentionally and they reacted by manifesting their anger with words or maybe even a little rage. You are on the receiving end of a verbal tongue lashing and it wasn’t in a private setting. Your instincts will be to react back with equal force but if you have that little compass you got when you raised your bar it will steer you to the better way to respond.

In college sometimes you’ll do almost anything to make a few bucks especially if you are married, have children, and bills. Once upon a time in that situation, living in a place we lovingly called, “The Ghetto”, a neighbor asked me while on a home teaching visit, if I’d be interested in some part time work. Turns out he was a Constable and wanted me to serve legal papers for him. So I became a Process Server. (I refer to it now as a “Brain Dead Process Server”, not that there’s anything wrong with it.)

The deal was, for every legal paper I served I got a fixed amount of money based on the nature of the legal offense. I gave it a try and found out I could make real good money in just a few hours a night. For some reason I had a knack. I think I looked young, naïve, and innocent (it wasn’t too long previously that I honed this great skill while tracting in the mission field) so people answered their door even when they were taking deliberate steps to avoid being served.

Legal papers that were real old and hadn’t been served were worth substantially more than new ones. I made it a point to take some of these old ones that had gone unserved for a long time and usually could place them quickly. I made good money and met good people and soon the Constable asked if I’d like to branch out to some things that made even more money. This was repossession and transporting bail jumpers back to the State. It wasn’t bounty hunting but it was badge carrying, gun toting, wannabe stuff. It was a world I didn’t know even existed and was amazed punks like me could be doing it with so little training with a guy who was only a couple of degrees shy of kind of scary.

The Constable was what you could call an irascible character. He had been doing this Constable thing for a long time, knew a lot about it, but thought he knew more than he did. Even I could see that, brain dead as I was. He was frequently on a cop-wannabe ego trip, short on temper, and usually picked public venues to air his anger at who ever dared cross him. So why put up with it? I don’t know, brain death, bills to pay, “easy” money. After a couple of years of it, it was getting old and he was getting old but like I said, the money was good and okay, I was afraid to tell him “I quit.”

One thing I found out the hard way was that he liked to pull over people who cut him off in traffic. He actually had a “cherry” (a portable red flasher thing he could stick on his dashboard like cops have) in his car and with the badges and stuff, he could get away with it though he had no police authority and only did it to yell at people because they ticked him off. If I only knew then what I know now. Yea, I probably should have ‘ratted’ him out but what did I know. I’m like twenty-two and he’s sixty and been doing this for thirty years. Plus we dealt with cops all the time so I figured he must have known what he was doing. But it seemed weird all the same and I didn’t like to be with him when it happened.

One time, right in front of the Century movie theatre on State Street and 3300 South, we were going somewhere and he had me driving. (Oh I forgot to tell you, he liked me to chauffer him when he took me on a job.) So I was driving and he was shotgun and someone pulled out ahead of us, cut us off, and sped through the intersection (north on State at 33rd) on a stale yellow light. He told me to run it as he lit the cherry and put it in the car window. I told him it was red as I hit the brakes and he screamed for me to run it. So I ran it. We lived.

Then he told me to catch up to the person so they’d pull over. I did but they weren’t pulling over. So he told me to honk the horn at them. Those that know me can testify, I hate honking car horns. It’s one of my deals. I started to argue with him and he reached over and laid on the horn himself. They kept going and he told me to pull up along side of them in the outer lane so he could flash his badge and waive them over. I said no, we were driving too fast and I wasn’t going to do it. This was all going on, mind you, while I’m driving and trying to maintain control of the car. He went ballistic so I pulled up along side of them and he tried to waive the person over. I noticed at this point the car was full of passengers; maybe six people or so. The driver still wouldn’t pull over so he told me to pull over in their lane, cut them off, and then block them in. All I knew of this maneuver was from what I’d seen on the TV shows so clearly I told him I didn’t know how. He grabbed the wheel and started yanking it toward the other vehicle so I had to speed up or hit them. When I got ahead of them, he yanked hard and we cut over and I hit the brakes. Both vehicles stopped and we had the other car blocked in just like he wanted. Problem was he couldn’t get out of his door because it was angled against the other vehicle so there wasn’t clearance. Plus he was a lard butt.

Adrenaline was running a little high now, as you can imagine, and he was yelling at me to move the car so he could open his door. There were other lanes of traffic, my adrenaline was making me hyperventilate, and the guy’s anger toward me was really ticking me off. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to back up or pull ahead. Both prospects had their downside so in the midst of his yelling I was trying to figure it out and probably went both ways before settling on backing up. Finally he got out and approached the other vehicle to yell at the driver. Keep in mind this all took place in about the same amount of time I am recounting it; only a half-a-minute or so.
So he’s out talking to the driver and I could hear him yelling at the guy and then he yells at me (I stayed in the vehicle, it wasn’t my beef) and asks me if I’m going to just sit in the car or if I had come to do some work. I got out of the car wondering what the heck I was supposed to do and the Constable was cuffing the driver like on Cops. I figured something else was up now and so I’m like, “What do you want me to do?” It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question for a brain dead process server but it just set him off and I got an earful in front of the driver, the five other passengers from the vehicle, and all the people walking down the freaking sidewalk wo had all stopped to gawk at us. He was colorfully screaming things like, “Do I have to do everything” and “Can’t you do anything without being told” and my all time favorite and I quote exactly, “Why don’t you put on a pair big boys, and help me out here!” Really!

As it turned out, I found out shortly thereafter, the car this fellow was driving happened to be a car he had been trying to repossess for months and could never find it and the driver was a frequent customer and had multiple warrants out on him. Further, it turns out, the Constable did have the power to pull over and detain in this situation (which doesn’t absolve him from some of the other things I observed.) Nevertheless, did I really have to stand there and hear about what a waste of space I was, and in front of all these people who were now standing around major gawking, while we waiting for the real cops to show up? Freaking really!

What would you have done or said? Instinctually when you get caught in these situations you want to either sneak out a back entrance and hide under a really big rock, or kick the person upside the head. I liked the kick upside the head one. But what should you do? (Did I tell you he also had a gun?)

My instincts told me to yell back at him, tell him what I thought of him, tell him I thought he was a big fat wannabe cop, tell him I had no respect for him and his game of pulling people over for their poor driving, and then get a few more shots in – maybe do a good one in relation to his “big boys” comment and make it about Depends or something age related. Something about Barney Fife would be good but the guy was way to fat. I didn’t though because I did have some respect for him, even though he had his moments, and like I said, he scared me. Plus, and I didn’t find out until later but it makes the point, he was in the right here (in the pull over) even though I had no clue what he was doing, he didn’t communicate it well, and probably went about it in a reckless manner. Also, I got half the booty and on a car repo’ and an arrest warrant, I’d make the Fall Quarter tuition and we’d eat.

Dignity. I love that word.

The biggest worry of a parent - after all the cuteness of their youth and the love you have for them that has no bounds which goes without saying - as a child leaves home is that they will behave appropriately in public. Of course you want them to be safe but you want them to also be responsible. You want them to not tarnish the family name; more, you want them to bring it honor. So what is it kids are always told. Walk away from bad things. Don’t ever do anything wrong. Know who you are and what you represent.

We all represent something and others and should only do things that bring honor to them. Never disgrace others by your actions. It’s just not cool. I like the motto of the Goodyear Corporation: “Protect Our Good Name.” Too bad Firestone didn’t have the same motto when they put out substandard tires a few years ago that killed people. Too bad Constables don’t know that. My boss embarrassed himself by the way he treated me. Everyone there and the Cops who came later while he was still ranting saw him as a pretty petty person (love that alliteration.)

I came away with my dignity because I didn’t sink to his level. I represented the County just like him and sinking to his level at that time could only harm the organization and bring tarnish to my family who raised me different. One of the cops later told me I did the right thing to ignore him; “He blows off steam but he means well.” It’s true. I think he lost his head and appreciated I didn’t. It taught me a lot that I would use later in dealing with elected officials and others who get full of themselves from time to time. I always walk away. My smart mouth instincts are on high alert but my compass tells me to walk on by. At least until I get to the car and roll up the windows.

Key to the whole point – as I see it:

Raising the bar means we walk away from confrontations. Always remember what your goal is and what the task is you are trying to accomplish. Fighting with Neanderthals who have no manners and who bring dishonor on themselves is not the right thing to do – probably ever. They will never get it and the heat of battle isn’t a learning moment. Stay dignified and others will see who the big person is and you will come away winning every time. You will also get the respect of others who will know who the buttheads are and who they aren’t.