You dreaded it, and it has happened: you have become your parents and grandparents, but at least a bit cooler.
Contemporary Americans have much to be relieved about. Cultural shifts over the last sixty years have gradually absolved us of the burden of maintaining bourgeois respectability.
Most of us need no longer concern ourselves with what the neighbors think of our sexual orientation, morals, or religious beliefs. Even teachers and clergy are often on the cutting edge of what would once have been described as alternative lifestyles. Avocations and conduct once dismissed as worthy only of children or adolescents are now considered quite worthwhile for adults, even the elderly.
But with this liberation comes a heavy cost: Millions of American adults live in dread of an implacable new standard. Yes, they are tormented by the horror of somehow possibly becoming uncool like their parents and grandparents, for to be uncool is a living death.
My friends, there is no cause for alarm for becoming your parents, and it is in a spirit of charity that I offer the following counsel:
Let’s begin with one of the most visible and powerful proclaimers of identity — your automobile.
It’s perfectly OK to drive a station wagon — tall and chunky and lumpy, nothing like the sleek, low-slung wagons of previous generations — as long as it’s called a “sport-utility vehicle.”
Thank goodness your station –uh, I mean your sport-utility vehicle — will not have a name dreamed up by someone with Brylcreem-slicked hair who wanted to make the vehicle sound exciting and interesting: Fury, Comet, Dart, Bel Air, Fairlane, etc.
No, it will have a name derived from focus groups and polls by someone with gel-slicked hair who wanted to be sure the vehicle sounds inoffensive or like something that makes sedentary people feel like wilderness guides as they tool home to their houses in suburban developments with names intended to blot out memories of the “bland conformity” of their parents’ and grandparents’ suburban housing developments.
It’s also just fine to tune in to “easy listening” music while driving your station –DADGUMMIT! I did it again!–as long as you’re streaming it and it’s called “smooth jazz” or “New Age.” Better still if the performer is a bit freaky-looking. This Yanni guy really rocks, doesn’t he?
You may experience guilt associated with envying a hopelessly old-fashioned mechanism of fakery known as a girdle or corset. Don’t you worry about it, girlfriend (or boyfriend, or dude). Today we have “shapewear” to help us avert the flabyss (I just made that up!) of Uncool.
You may also find that your intestinal motility is not what it once was. Time to buzz on over to the grocery store for some “dried plums.” As you wheel your cart through the aisles, you’ll be treated to music intended to make you happy — and fiscally uninhibited — by reminding you of when you were young, carefree, libidinous, and filled with contempt for large four-door vehicles, middle-age spread, health cranks, and old people who live in the past and are easily manipulated by corporations.
While shopping for those dried plums, be sure to pause and have a look at the nutritional supplements. You might find some vitamins called EgoSportSex50+ or some such (look for a platinum-colored bottle) to help you avoid ending up like that old accordion-playing bandleader fellow on that TV show sponsored by Geritol. And speaking of his sponsors, which also included Sominex and Williams Lectric Shave, you just remembered you’re nearly out of melatonin for your insomnia, and you need to get some more shaving supplies for that special person who prunes his entire noggin in order to conceal his very uncool male-pattern baldness.
As you drive home to Cedarbrook Chase Run Glade, reflect that you are a strong, empowered, overcoming [your choice of triumphant-sounding noun here] in a muscular but responsible vehicle that offends no one and that proclaims you to be a fearless adventurer who drinks caribou urine directly from the font. Sneak a quick look in the mirror, adjust your shapewear, turn up Kenny G a bit louder, and remind yourself that above all you are not cliched or boring, you are not a conformist, you are REAL, you are eternally young — and you are not uncool.
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