Generation

When an eight year old boy uses the word ‘cool’ in the context of creating a new superhero, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to establish what exactly he means. According to the Oxford English Dictionary cool has few possible definitions. It’s unlikely Little Timmy means restrained or relaxed pertaining to Jazz (especially modern Jazz.)

So I figured it had to be either of a fairly low temperature or fashionably attractive or impressive. But without having the etymological tome to hand it was kind of hard for me to get one of these explanations across clearly.

The explanation with regards to heat was easy enough to get across; the other left me at a bit of a loss for words. How do you explain ‘cool’ so that it is clear you mean 'of personality'. I wracked my memory banks trying to come up with something that epitomised the hip laidback variant of the word. I came up with the Fonz.

Yes, when trying to define ‘cool ‘I went to the fall back of 1970’s sitcom Happy Days, Arthur Fonzarelli. While I didn’t have the leather jacket and the slick backed hair I did go so far as to stick my thumbs up and go ‘AAayyy.’ Of course to a group of eight and nine year olds I may as well have been talking Portuguese.

They had obviously never heard of the Henry Winkler character that was last relevant in 1982. Even back then he was never really cool. He was only made to look cool because he hung around with people like Richie Cunningham.

I wish I could say this was the first time that one of my pop culture analogies had gone over the heads of the young people I work with in Fighting Words. They would so miss the humour in this blog.

One young boy wanted a synonym for antennae on an insect. He didn’t like 'feelers' as an alternative so I suggested ‘zogabons.’ He thought I was making it up. He had never heard of Zig and Zag. An older girl told me “I was so retro,” because I had a book about Dawson’s Creek in my hand. It was “so 90’s.”

I guess it happens to us all. When we realise we aren’t as ‘cool’ as we used to be. That rock/pop music isn’t supposed to be for us anymore. Despite our efforts to still buy Q and NME magazine, there is the realisation that we have all said at least once “it’s not as good as it was in my day.”

I don’t want to be one of those people who talk about ‘kids of today’ and how ‘in my day’ but I just don’t get kids of today. In my day Beverly Hills 90210 was about Brandon and Brenda Walsh and the Karate Kid was played by Ralph Macchio...Hillary Swank at a push.

That said I’m ok with getting older. Being young was never that great anyway and I reckon I’ll look good with grey hair. I just go with the mid 30’s punches and if I ever get in a situation where I’m a little lost I just ask one question. WWFD? What would Fonzie do?