Cool kids can't be geniuses and I can't be either one
I wasted my precious adolescence on trying to be a cool kid. The effort I poured into being mutually acknowledged by others who oozed cool so naturally—like they were active volcanoes continuously producing molten lava at the expense of the poor suckers in the village below (shit, that volcano is hot, yet, so cool...it's been dating Donnie the quarterback)—always ended up getting me burned, and burned badly. Not because I eventually was ignored or made fun of, but because I thought I wanted to be close to these people, or better yet, be these people, thus being blinded to what should have mattered the most: my brain.
Growing up, I was consistently torn between social acceptance and fear of my dad. I wasn't afraid of him, physically, but feared disappointing him. I, me and all that I am, was slow-cooked in a thick stew of responsibility, self-worth, inner drive, and Catholic guilt. I was the tender, uncooked meat being purposefully braised with these "flavors," and over time, I would be the perfect morsel my father could be proud of. Doesn't she taste delicious! Better, yet, doesn't she look primed to win a blue ribbon in a chili cook-off?
You go fly a kite.
However, if I had been driven only by fear of disappointing my dad, then my brain would be a melting pot of knowledge—seasoned, zesty, and brimming with genius. Mmmm, smell that big, beautiful brain! I had the smarts; good grades and smiley-faced check-marks came so easily to me. But, as I said above, I was torn. I wanted to be cool. And, geniuses aren't cool, at least not until I got to a certain age and realized that I wished I tried harder to be a genius instead of trying harder to get invited to some lame cool-kid field party where everyone stands out in the middle of an empty stretch of tall, itchy grass and tries to drink oneself into a stuttering oblivion all before the hour of 11 p.m. just so Bobby the lacrosse player will hold back the hair from one's face while puke spews from glossed-up lips that only moments ago were being kissed by said lacrosse player. Because then I would either 1. be making more money, 2. be on T.V., 3. have a Wikipedia page dedicated to my life history, 4. have published my first award-winning novel by 15, 4. be writing for Wired magazine, or 5. all of the above.
So, I wasn't a teenage prodigy. But, unfortunately, I wasn't heaping with coolness either. How could I have been? Cool kids shouldn't care about doing well in school or being nice to teachers by making them clay pencil holders in pottery class (forgive me while I religiously adhere to all the long-standing stereotypes and 80s movie version of being cool). I was a rule abider-by and an honor student and a tomboy who discovered that having breasts might be able to get me somewhere in life and sloppily attempted that theory by wearing short skirts, low-cut tops, and clunky men's boots. A silly, incomplete assumption that didn't fully work in my favor. I was a square; but I was pretty and had cool friends, so that helped.
And thank goodness for those attractive friends! Because otherwise I would've been resigned to wearing ripped-up, black stockings and sticky Marilyn Manson T-shirts smoking cigarettes on the corner across the street from the high school in a cluster of other black-cloth draped kids, like depressed flies swarming a trash can. Yeah, because it's that black and white—either you're cool or you're a total freak of nature.
Because I couldn't dedicate myself to one path or the other (and there are only two paths in life: the road and the road less traveled (hahahahahaah)) I got locked into a lifestyle of inflated mediocrity. I am darn good at a lot of different life activities, but not really, really awesome at one single task. I regret making an effort to be cool because I don't have much to show for it now—I buy second-hand teen clothing, some of my favorite musicians are dead drug addicts, and my closest friends are three cats.
And to exacerbate my failings, I have chosen to spend the rest of my life with one of the most committed, smart people I know: my husband. My husband's a genius who dedicated his adolescence to being just that: a genius. He wasn't cool in high school because he was focused on conquering the world. And good for him. While I was pining over some stupid lacrosse player, writing in my diary about what sort of hairstyle might capture his interest and, at the same time, trying to diligently study for final exams, my husband was making a robotic car that could detect obstructions in its path. Which brings me to my ultimate point of this article: you're either a cool kid, a genius, or me.
Being cool or being a genius takes time and commitment. I should have embraced my brain and nurtured it—I had it in me early on. But alas, I learned a terrible lesson: geniuses will always end up being infinitely cooler than the coolest cool kid you can remember from high school, college, etc. Maybe not right away, maybe not in the next decade, but geniuses get remembered, and furthermore, they get documented. How many cool kids get a Wikipedia page because they were beer pong champions? Yeah, I didn't think so.