When you were so cool

A hipster toddler -- or rather, a toddler dressed as his hipster mother would like him to look -- had just been pulled from his carseat, his oversized newscap, tiny-sized aviator sunglasses, nubby sweater, cuffed jeans and bitty Converse tennies overpowering his wiry body. 

The October sun hung low. There was a fall festival and a nearby park and we were checking it out in the final hour before the petting zoo goats and ponies were ushered off, the face painters packed up and the few runt pumpkins not claimed by little kids were gently tucked away in a corner of the fieldhouse. E, on his scooter - the one with the sparks that fly when the brakes are hit - whizzed by. 

"HE. IS. SO. COOL!" The toddler yelled out in that completely awesome, lovable, totally not self-conscious way the littlest kids do. 

I laughed. His mom caught my eye, or at least I think she did from behind her midnight blue Prada shades, and she smiled back. 

Maybe it was the mohawk helmet E wears. People often stop him or call out compliments about his headgear when we are out in the neighborhood. It is bendy and colorful and looks pretty rad. E knows this. He nods and smiles or yells back a "THANK YOU!" across a street or behind him as he flies past. 

It could have been the scooter itself, which E is so enamored with and gives my newly 9-year old such a puffed up feeling of bliss, he refuses to get on a bike. He saves the spark-brakes for perfect moments, sometimes as punctuation to a stranger's call-out about his helmet.

But I like to think the little boy was sensing E's confidence, his sway back and slight smile, the swift swing of his leg in the air with every push forward. 

I've seen that confidence swell since last spring, catapulting him into more and more independence. He wants to do more on his own. He runs blocks ahead of me. Crosses streets on his own (after frantically, reassuringly looking four or five times each way). He pouts. He squeals. He shakes his booty to the slow rhythm of every song that plays from the radio or TV commercial. He reads and reads and reads and then asks me to buy him three or four more books at a time so he doesn't have to wait a day to read more. This boy is on fire.

Independence, confidence - they aren't free. The cost of feeling those things is being concerned with appearing as those things. And so the icy part of the cool sets in.

This year, in third grade, there is a lot more emphasis on being cool, looking cool, acting cool. He worries that wearing pants on a day that might heat up will not only feel uncomfortable, it won't look cool. He will do everything in his primary-grade power to avoid wearing a jacket on the playground for the same reason. And that kiss for his mom before racing off toward the school? That can only be done in the safe, unseen bubble of the car now. 

Sense that sarcasm while standing with the filthy, pilly, stinky Tigger? That's apparently cool. 

His hair? Combed a certain cool way. His shoes? A cool color. The goofy-boy voices he and his friends talk in for hours and hours? Hilariously cool. Football instead of cops and robbers at recess? Cooler. Being one full book in the series ahead of the other kid reading the brand new Rick Riordan novel in his class? Cooler than that kid even knows. 

I see the tug of confidence and cool, I watch him oscillate between wonder and worry. And I want to yell out like a less-hipster, much-taller version of that toddler to run with the best of who he is and leave the concerns behind on the sidewalk. 

I have eleventy-billion of these selfies, to which I now respond with Couldn't Care Less Lips.

He wears cool well, this kid. Or at least the kind of cool that doesn't come with a cap or glasses or kind of denim or certain walk or highly irritating cartoon voice. Mostly because he is a serious person who laughs hard at himself, a deep thinker whose favorite pose is as a sarcastic deep thinker. I love that he is right there, in that place.

See what I'm screaming? He really loves that pose.

Remember when you were so cool? When you felt that way? When you let it push you forward, past little kids and admirers? Before a girl or a boy had told you that you weren't cool anymore. Or before your heart was broken? Or your skin and hormones and growth plates felt out of control? Or you'd been denied coverage or lost or job or not gotten into the school of your dreams? That space in time felt good and free, didn't it?

I want him to hold on to that. I want him to carry that confidence and cool carefully, tuck it into his pocket and ride on, rubber helmet fauxhawk bending in the breeze he has created by going, going, going. 

Comments

[Erica Shaw]

It's nice to see another single mom blogging. I loved your Huff Post article. Thanks for sharing your words and unique voice!