HW # 25 Part 2 (short stories)

In the 5 short stories that I have read I noticed that that the writers try to get at two basic aspects of cool: describing a person who may appear cool but who is not, and describing an actual cool-type dude or dudette, according to the writer. Among the appear-cool types there are breakdowns too. There is the person who considers herself to be cool by association with an even cooler person who drinks and does drugs. Obviously in the writer's mind neither one is cool. Then, there is also the person who feels cool by comparing himself with uncool people. Among the actual cool types there is the person who is not consciously trying to be cool but has some leadership qualities and positive energy that draws people to him. And there is the person who is cool because he is different from everyone else and is busy following his own interests. He might not be the most popular person but in the writer's mind he is cool because he is interesting. There is even what I would call an in between cool guy. He is considered cool because he doesn't let anybody get too close to him, making people want to try to get close. It turns out that the reason he doesn't let peoople get close to him is because his parents abused him.

What is interesting about these various ways to think about who is cool is that we all seem to think that really cool people aren't the phony ones. But probably in our own lives we are all at times conscious of trying to be cool even though we show in our stories that we don't have respect for phonies or posers. The truth is that most of us have are cool and uncool moments, and our perceptions of who is cool change. Also, people can be cool in some ways and not in others. The people who have the most cool moments are associated with archetypes like: the cowboy/rebel, the jock, the knockout, or the mysterious guy, and the saintly person, who usually doesn't get that many cool credits. You can probably be too good to be cool. Another thing I noticed is that the male writers all seemed to write about cool and uncool males and the female writers wrote about both female and male cool and uncool characters. In this regard maybe the female writers are cooler.