The importance of being cool

By By Craig Ziemba / guest columnist
June 16, 2002
Craig Ziemba is a pilot who lives in Meridian.
One of the most valuable lessons Dad taught me without saying a word was how overrated it was to be cool. By teenage standards, my Dad was definitely not cool, but the more I experience real life, the more I see just how important his values really were compared to those of my peers.
I ran across one of my old yearbooks in the attic and had a good laugh. Popularity in high school was usually determined, not by one's character, personality, drive, and intelligence, but by what you wore, what you drove, how hard you partied, and how well you threw a ball. Priorities that decided whether or not you would become successful as an adult took second place to things that made little or no difference for the rest of your life.
It's amazing how linked the teenage psyche is to something as shallow as image. Fixation with fashion is a normal phase teenagers go through, but I learned that clothes that once seemed so important were used to check the oil a couple of years later. Sadly, some people never grow out of adolescent image consciousness and spend their lives in debt trying to keep up with increasingly expensive status symbols.
Nothing catapulted a teenager into the social stratosphere quite like having a cool car. We all knew who drove what (I shared mom's station wagon with two sisters while Dad drove an economy car) and turned green with envy when someone pulled into the parking lot with a Camaro or Trans Am. My sisters and I went to college while quite a few of the kids with new cars went absolutely nowhere.
The principle of delayed gratification is hard to appreciate when you are 16. In short, it means putting off some of the pleasures you want now in order to have long-term fulfillment down the road. This applies to everything from whether or not to work hard in school to whether or not to live with your girlfriend before you say, "I do."
Getting everything you want right off the bat seems like a good deal at the time, but it's really a recipe for disaster. I couldn't help but notice while thumbing through the yearbook that almost everyone who was really cool in high school turned out to be losers later in life, while many of the socially average are at the top of their professions today.
Being popular was expensive. You couldn't be cool without partying, and the coolest guy in our school ended up on drugs and in jail. Five wasted years later, he went back to school, but he wasn't as popular the second time around.
The problem with thinking you have arrived is that you tend to stop striving. The ones who peaked in popularity at an early age usually didn't worry about training their minds or disciplining themselves to develop a work ethic. Consequently, when they became adults, they learned the hard way that employers weren't impressed with their image. Desirable jobs went to dependable, educated people who knew how to work.
One of my friends who wasn't concerned with being cool never partied with the "in" crowd. He still says "Yes sir" and "Yes ma'am," is faithful to his wife, doesn't cuss and goes to church. When I first met him he was a Navy test pilot, before that he flew fighters over Iraq, and before that he was the Most Valuable Player of his college football team. He never got high or spent a year following some band, but I doubt he feels cheated today. Maybe after he gets back from his first space shuttle mission I'll ask him.